Guides: Critical Writing Program: Global Health: Research Tools

The books

E-book and print versions of the required work in the Penn Libraries collections.

Improvising medicine : an African oncology ward in an emerging cancer epidemic / Julie Livingston
Duke University Press, 2012. (e-book and print)

Background Resources

These resources provide contextual information.

"Disease". Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
Yes, the article is interesting, but the "Talk" tab is MORE interesting. That's where you'll learn what the Wikipedia editors see as controversial, weak, or erroneous in the article. You can also watch the article go through revisions and compare specific revisions using the article's "View History" tab.
WARNING! Be careful to keep track of where you are in Wikipedia's backstage: both the article and discussion pages have their own "View History" tabs!
"Anthropologies of cancer and risk, uncertainty and disruption" / Lenore Manderson, in Companion to medical anthropology (Wiley, 2011).
A handbook chapter that discusses several dozen medical anthropology ethnographies.
"Illness narratives" / Ron Loewe, in Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures. New York: Springer, 2004.
A sample chapter. The first section of this reference work offers chapters on Big Topics; the back half consists of chapters on specific cultures around the world.
"Healing and health care", in New Encyclopedia of Africa, 2nd ed. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008)
From the leading reference work on Africa, this article emphasizes local perspectives, attitudes, and treatments.
"Health and Human Rights: Overview" / S. Gruskin and D. Tarantola. International Encyclopedia of Public Health. (Elsevier, 2008) pp. 137-146. (ScienceDirect.)
An article covering Africa and other continents, from a recent specialist encyclopedia, which also has useful articles on national health systems, their strengths and weaknesses, and the history of their development, as well as on traditional health practitioners and on public health aspects of specific diseases.
"Human Rights". United Nations
A good starting point into the web of UN agencies that includes UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNHCR, and many others.
Disease Control Priorities Project - DCP3
Provides fulltext for Global Burden of Disease and Risk Factors (2006) and Disease Control Priorities in the Developing World (2nd ed, 2006) and other useful country-, disease-, and topic-specific information.
"Social Determinants of Health". World Health Organization
The website of WHO's Commission on Social Determinants of Health, convened during 2005-2008. A useful collection of reports and other resources on country problems and programs and on themes such as "Early child development" and "Social exclusion". Beware that this website is no longer being updated.

Scholarly Databases

These databases will help you find scholarly articles about your topic.

HINT! Try to search by building sets of synonyms linked together with "OR" (between synonyms) and "AND" (between sets of synonyms).

(botswana OR tswana OR kalanga OR san OR bechuana*)
(botswana OR "southern africa" OR zimbabwe OR malawi OR zambia OR namibia)
(cancer OR disease* OR malaria OR hiv OR aids OR "human immunodeficiency" OR "acquired immune")

IBSS - International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
The best one-stop indexing database for the social sciences journal and book literature. Covers the scholarly literature worldwide 1955-present, focusing on anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology.
Sociological Abstracts
SocAbs covers scholarly works in sociology, demography, and human rights. Recently absorbed Social Services Abstracts to add coverage of social policy, social work, and social planning. Has a strong orientation toward US publications, but cover worldwide materials, too.
CINAHL
A great bibliographic database on nursing topics, includng patient care, access to health care, and health care provision.
Anthropology PLUS
Two library catalogs (with journal article records) in one database, covering all subdisciplines of anthropology, ethnography, and archaeology: lots of duplication that forgives careless searching!

Global Health
A very large bibliographic database, extending back to 1910 and covering public health, tropical and communicable diseases, and other health topics worldwide.
ALERT!
Our Global Health subscription has a limited number of ports. If you're turned away, try MEDLINE.
SEARCH SUGGESTIONS:
Searching this is not intuitive. Work in steps. So, search on each keyword synonym set separately. After you've completed a few searches, check on some of the numbered "Search History" sets, and combine those selections with "and."
Search results appear at the bottom of the search display. Don't be fooled! They're there - just scroll down the page.
WARNING!
Global Health includes clinical research articles that may be too technical for your needs. DO NOT BE DISTRACTED!

WHOLIS
The WHO Library catalog. Provides links to fulltext World Health Organization publications and other items. WHOLIS also indexes individual articles in many public health journals.
HINT!
If there's no hyperlink to fulltext for WHOLIS items that look interesting, use the PennText Article Finder, Google Scholar, or Franklin to find fulltext.
Annual Reviews
A fulltext e-journal collection, with all titles starting, "Annual Review of ...". Articles are lengthy literature reviews, often with ENORMOUS bibliographies. Useful for both the text summary and the citations for further reading.
SEARCH SUGGESTION:
Click on the search box in the upper right corner of the startup window to open the Advanced Search template. Then restrict your searching to the AnnRev journals on Anthropology, Sociology, and Public Health.

Google Scholar
Access to Google Scholar with Penn-only links to full-text articles. Once authenticated through Penn's proxy, full-text articles to which Penn Libraries subscribe will become available within the Google Scholar search results.

Search for databases by subject

Using Citations to Find Resources

You may already have citations of relevance to the text on which you are working. These resources will help you find an online or print version of the cited work.

Have a complete article citation? Use the PennText Article Finder on the Franklin homepage.
HINT! If your journal has a one-word title - Lancet, Africa, Science, Time - or your first attempt overwhelms you, be sure to set the Journal Title search to "Begins with" or "Exact Match".
HINT! Less information is often better than complete information. Try searching for the Journal Title, Date (Year only is OK), Volume, Issue, and Start Page.
Only know the journal title? Use Quick E-Lookup on the library homepage.
Quick E-Lookup searches a custom list of our library's e-resources.
Looking for a book? Use Franklin Catalog on the library homepage.
HINT! Set the Franklin search to "Title Browse".

Getting Physical Books

First, use Franklin to identify the book's library and call number.

Van Pelt Stack Directory
If your book is in Van Pelt Library, this chart will tell you the floor and side of the building in which you can find it. Just match the beginning of the call number with the letter or number on the chart.
Reading Call Numbers
If you are not familiar with the Library of Congress call number system then this table will explain how you can find an individual book once you have found the part of the library that has items in that call number range.
Other Libraries
Locations of Penn's libraries
If the book is in "LIBRA"
If the location of the book is listed as "LIBRA" then click on the "Request" link located to the right of the book. It will be shipped to the library you choose in one or two business days.

Search Aids

Keyword search worksheet
This document suggests a good method of crafting effective keyword searches.

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Librarian & Coordinator for Social Sciences Collections

Lauris Olson

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Contact:

University of Pennsylvania Libraries
203 Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
University of Pennsylvania
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Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206
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215-898-0119

Subjects: African Studies, Aging Studies, Communication, Criminology, Data & GIS, Economics, Food Studies, Health & Societies, Immigration, Linguistics, Philadelphia Studies, Population Studies & Demography, Social Sciences, Sociology, Urban Studies