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Nursing Students Orientation: Home

Welcome!

Welcome to Odum Library with a stethoscope icon

 

Hello, Nursing Students in the College of Nursing & Health Sciences!

The librarians at Odum Library have designed this guide to highlight important library resources for nursing students. 

 

Guide Topics 

 

  • How to get the most out of Odum Library resources
  • Databases perfect for nursing research
  • Services available at Odum Library to make your research easier

 

Need Help?

 

  • For immediate help, use Live Chat to contact the reference librarian on duty.
  • Schedule an online Research Appointment for in-depth research assistance. Research appointments are typically between 30 and 60 minutes. Appointments can be individual or small groups and can take place online using Live Chat or Blackboard Collaborate

Live Chat

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Making the Most of Odum: Logging in to access library resources with a stethoscope icon

 

Odum Library provides access to journal articles, e-books, and other resources. On or off-campus, you'll need to log in to access library resources. We try to make the login process easy so there are many different options depending on where and how you like to access the library. 

 

Logging In Options 

 

  • MyVSU

    • Go to Valdosta State's home page, http://www.valdosta.edu/
    • Click on MyVSU, located in upper left
    • Log in 
    • On the MyVSU page, beside Portals, click View All
    • Scroll down and select GALILEO Anywhere Access from the list

 

  • Anywhere Access

    • When you're on a library web page, look for Anywhere Access buttons 
      • On this page and other research guides, the Anywhere Access buttons are red 
      • On the library home page, the Anywhere Access button is gray
    • Click on the button and log in with your VSU username and password 

making the most of odum:library services with an icon of a stethoscope

 

Library Services 

 

 

  • Research Assistance 

    • Live Chat is a quick and easy way to get immediate assistance.
    • Online Research Appointments are a good option if you want personalized research help with a librarian.
      • Online research appointments can be done through Blackboard Collaborate  Ultra or Live Chat.
      • With Collaborate Ultra, we can talk and share screens, similar to an in-person research appointment.
    • E-mail is a good option when the reference desk and chat are closed. A librarian will reply to your e-mail during the next business day (the next time the desk is open).

 

  • Interlibrary Loan (ILL-Odum Express)

    • ​VSU students, faculty, and staff can request materials that the library does not own through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). The library will borrow the requested materials from another library.
      • Articles are generally delivered as PDFs that can be accessed online. Remember to download and save the PDF.
      • Book chapters can be requested and recieved as a PDF scan. 
      • Books are usually able to be borrowed, but are currently suspended due to the pandemic. 
    • Learn how to login and request articles through ILL. 

 

Saving yor research with a stethoscope icon

 

Save time and your research! Make sure you can access your article or search results again by following one of the suggestions below: 

 

E-mail

 

Most database offer the ability to send articles to your e-mail. This can be a quick and convenient way to make sure that your research and articles arrive in your inbox. 

 

Download 

 

If you're working on a personal computer, you can download the PDFs. If you're not on a personal computer or you would like to back up your research, we recommend downloading the PDFs and then uploading to your favorite cloud-based storage service (OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.). 

 

Permalink 

 

Unlike other places on the internet, bookmarking your results page in your browser or copying the address in the search bar will not work for databases and other library resources.  

Instead, most databases will generate a permalink in a specially labeled box. This is the link that you'll want to save in a Word document or e-mail. 

To learn more about permalinks, visit this page: https://libguides.valdosta.edu/permalinks

 

Account/Folder

 

Databases like EBSCO will allow you to create an account. Once you log in, you can save your articles to your folder. When you're ready to revisit your research, just log into your database account again to find your saved articles. 

 

Finding nursing articles with a stethoscope icon

When you're looking for a nursing articles, you'll probably want to search in a nursing database. These discipline-specific databases will give you more options as you conduct your searches. 

 

  • CINAHL with Full Text

    • CINAHL is a favorite of nursing professors and for a good reason. 
      • CINAHL provides full-text access to over 750 nursing journals. 
      • CINAHL also indexes another 2,928 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health.
        • This makes it easy to find and request articles through Interlibrary Loan!

 

  • Benefits of CINAHL

    • Can search for articles using keywords or CINAHL headings 
    • Includes discipline-specific limiters to add to your search like: 
      • Evidence-Based Practice 
      • First Author is a Nurse/Any Author is a Nurse
      • Special Interest/Publication Type 

 

 

  • Other Nursing Databases 

Getting the full text with a stethoscope icon

 

Once you have found an article, you will probably want to read it.  To access the article, you will look for symbols like these: 

Icon for HTML Full Text

Icon and PDF Full Text

Icon and Find It @ VSU

 

Click on the respective symbol to access the article. 

 

HTML Full Text 

 

As a rule of thumb, avoid HTML Full Text when possible as it will resemble a web page and will not contain page numbers, making citing more difficult.

 

PDF Full Text 

 

PDF Full Text links you to a PDF copy of the article that you can then e-mail to yourself or download.

 

Find It @ VSU

 

If you see the Find It @ VSU button, this indicates that there is an extra step to access the article. The article may be found in another database or resource or it might available through an Interlibrary Loan (ILL).