Click the link above to enter CINAHL Complete. If you're off-campus you will be asked to login with your UA username and password (which you also use with Blackboard and email).
The CINAHL database is produced by a company called EBSCO. They make many databases, all of which use the same interface. Below you will see instructions for using a different EBSCO database, Academic Search Premier. CINAHL works exactly the same but will show you different search results since it is focused on nursing.
Academic Search Premier has a lot of buttons and search boxes. Don't be overwhelmed. Focus on the search bars at the top of the page. Enter your search terms on the first search bar and click "Search":
You should then see articles that match your search terms. Use the "Filter" button (1) to open up a list of ways to filter out articles (2):
In this results page, you can narrow down your search results to peer reviewed items by clicking the "Peer reviewed" button and making sure your search results have the "Peer reviewed" indicator:
Finally, you can access the full text of articles by clicking "Access Options" or "Check Library for FulL Text."
Clicking the title of an article will give you a detailed record with a summary (or abstract) of the article; information on when and where it was published, and who wrote it; and a button to quickly and automatically generate a citation (this button looks like a quotation mark):
In the "Cite" popup, select "APA 7th Edition" or your prefered style from the "Select Style" dropdown menu.
Most databases include an option in the search results page along the lines of "Limit to Full Text":
Don't use this! It is bad.
A database doesn't really exist to show you full articles. It exists to show you article citations, i.e., details of articles. Most databases have the full text for only some of these articles. If you click "Limit to Full Text" you might miss the best search results.
When you use "Limit to Full Text," you'll remove any result that would have had the "Check library for full text" link. Usually, clicking that link gets you the text of the article!
Sometimes, you will get a message saying that the item is not available online through the library:
But that's okay! Just make a note of the article title, its author, the journal it appeared in, the date, and the pages -- basically, what you see right there on the screen. Then go to the Mat-Su College Library website and click the "Interlibrary Loan" link:
At the Interlibrary Loan page, just fill out the form for requesting a journal article. We'll find a library with a print copy, we'll have them scan it and email it to us, we'll print it out for you, and then we'll let you know it's ready. This is a free and fast service. It gives you access to just about any journal article you could ever want.
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