Different kinds of information sources are useful depending on your topic and the type of information you need.
Books
Books
Books are good for general background and in-depth coverage of a topic. They are often not as current as journal articles because they take a long time to research, write, and publish.
Books may be useful when:
- You need a broad overview. There are times when you want someone to explain everything to you - beginning to end. Books are very appropriate for this.
- Your research topic is historical. Books lend themselves to topics in which the facts don't change much over time.
- You want several opinions from one place. Some books collect essays that give you several points of view in one source.
Books may not be useful when:
- The topic is very recent. Books take years to get researched, written, published, purchased, and put on library shelves. If the issue you are researching is constantly changing, a book may be outdated by the time it gets to the library.
- You have a fairly narrow topic. Sometimes books are too broad-based to address specific or narrow points.
Articles
Articles
Articles tend to be narrow in scope and are good for focused treatment of a topic. Scholarly journals contain high-quality articles usually written by experts and use data and statistics to back arguments. Popular magazines and newspapers (such as Newsweek, People, or the New York Times) are good for current treatment of a topic and are good resources for editorials and opinions. Note that popular magazines are not peer-reviewed.
Articles may be useful when:
- Your topic is very recent. Articles are intended to keep people up-to-date on the latest developments in various issues.
- Your research topic is very narrow in scope. Some topics are so specific, whole books will not be written on them.
Articles may not be useful when:
- You need background or overview information. Articles tend to focus on a specific aspect of a topic.
- Your topic covers a long time span. When an issue has a long history, you may only find one aspect discussed in an article.
Websites
Web Sites
Web sites can be very good for finding quality information including primary sources, statistical information, educational sites on many levels, policy, opinion of all kinds, and much more. However, you have to take the responsibility to rigorously evaluate each site for quality; anyone can post a Web page, regardless of their expertise or intentions.
- National Public Radio(NPR) NPR delivers breaking national and world news. Also top stories from business, politics, health, science, technology, music, arts and culture.
- BBC(British Broadcasting Corporation) It is the world's oldest national broadcaster.
- Edward G. Miner Digital Collection Edward G. Miner Library is a medical library located inside Strong Memorial Hospital. Miner Library provides resources, assistance, and an inviting space for you to visit. Please feel free to call Miner Library at (585) 275-3361 to speak with a medical library professional.
- ArchiveGrid ArchiveGrid includes over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.
- National Library of Medicine(Digital Collections) Digital Collections is the National Library of Medicine's free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, still images, videos, and maps. The content in Digital Collections is freely available worldwide and, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. Digital Collections provides unique access to NLM's rich historical resources, as well as select modern resources.
- Medical Heritage Library The Medical Heritage Library, Inc. is a collaborative digitization and discovery organization of some of the world’s leading medical libraries committed to providing open access to resources in the history of healthcare and health sciences. The MHL’s goal is to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and to strengthen understanding of the world in which we live.
- Welcome Collection These artworks and photographs are from the library at Wellcome Collection and have been collected over several decades. Most of the works were acquired between 1890 and 1936 by Sir Henry Wellcome and his agents across the globe. The images reflect Wellcome’s collecting interests and were intended to form a documentary resource that reflects the cultural and historical contexts of health and medicine.
- NYU LitMed database The Literature, Arts and Medicine Database (LitMed) is a collection of literature, fine art, visual art and performing art annotations created as a dynamic, comprehensive resource for scholars, educators, students, patients, and others interested in medical humanities. It was created by faculty of the New York University School of Medicine in 1993. The annotations are written by an invited editorial board of scholars from all over North America.
Book Examples
Black Man in a White Coat by
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*ONE OFTIME MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR ALIBRARY JOURNALBEST BOOK SELECTION*A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE BOOK SELECTION One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans When Damon Tweedy begins medical school,he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse,in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites." Black Man in a White Coatexamines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosedwith a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
ISBN: 9781250044631
The Color of Law by
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post-World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. "The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book" (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein's invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.
ISBN: 9781631492853
Superior by
2019 Best-Of Lists: 10 Best Science Books of the Year (Smithsonian Magazine) · Best Science Books of the Year (NPR's Science Friday) · Best Science and Technology Books from 2019" (Library Journal) An astute and timely examination of the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences. Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's 1994 title The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races. If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real. As our understanding of complex traits like intelligence, and the effects of environmental and cultural influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between "races"--to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions--stubbornly persists. At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science--and a powerful reminder that, biologically, we are all far more alike than different.
ISBN: 9780807076910
Fun Home by
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
ISBN: 0618477942
The White House Doctor by
A riveting look into the personal lives of our presidents through the eyes of their White House doctor "An interesting, behind-the-scenes glimpse of life at the White House." -Kirkus Reviews Dr. Connie Mariano served 9 years at the White House under Presidents George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush. She participated in world headline-making news events and traveled all over the world. She cared for visiting dignitaries and was charged with caring for all the members of the First Family. From flirting with King Juan Carlos of Spain to spending the night on the Queen of England's yacht, Dr. Mariano glimpsed a glittering and powerful celebrity that few ever see. White House Doctoris a fascinating look into what goes on behind closed doors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
ISBN: 9780312534844
Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Twenty-First Edition (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) by
The Voice of Clinical ReasonHarrison's Principles of Internal Medicine is the world's most trusted clinical medicine text--and a superb resource for learning the art and science of clinical reasoning. Recognized by healthcare professionals worldwide as the leading authority on applied pathophysiology and clinical medicine, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine provides the informational foundation you need for the best patient care possible. This new edition is fully updated with timely new chapters and essential updates across the spectrum of internal medicine. Written and edited by the world's top experts in their respective fields, this landmark guide provides comprehensive, accurate, and essential coverage of the pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Harrison's is world-renowned as the most authoritative source for: * Clear, concise schemas that facilitate the generation of differential diagnoses to reason efficiently through complex real world clinical cases * The physiologic and epidemiologic basis of signs and symptoms, which are covered through a wealth of unsurpassed expert guidance and linked to the disease-specific chapters that follow * Updated clinical trial results and recommended guidelines * Excellent and extensive visual support, including radiographs, clinical photos, schematics, and high-quality drawings * Coverage of both therapeutic approaches and specific treatment regimens * Practical clinical decision trees and algorithms * Organ/system-specific sections, with clinically relevant pathophysiology and practical clinical advice on the approach to the patient, strategies towards building a differential diagnosis, outstanding clinical algorithms and diagnostic schema, a wealth of clinical images and diagrams, current clinical guidelines, and general and specific approaches to therapy Harrison's remains the most trusted resource in a world influenced by endless sources of medical information. The most timely and comprehensive updates from the world's top experts are featured in the 21st edition: * Current coverage of the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, from COVID to dementia to sepsis to multiple sclerosis to lung cancer * Updated content that reflects new approved therapeutics and new practice-changing guidelines and evidence summaries * More than 1000 clinical, pathological, and radiographic photographs, diagnostic and therapeutic decision trees, and clear schematics and diagrams describing pathophysiologic processes * Numerous atlases featuring curated collections of important visual aspects of diagnosis and management * Updated and time-saving curation and synthesis of established and new medical literature and studies * Clinically relevant coverage of disease mechanics and pathophysiology, and related therapeutic mechanisms
ISBN: 9781264268504Publication Date: 2022
Narrative Medicine by
Narrative medicine has emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. Generated from a confluence of sources including humanities and medicine, primary care medicine, narratology, and the study ofdoctor-patient relationships, narrative medicine is medicine practiced with the competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. By placing events in temporal order, with beginnings, middles, and ends, and by establishing connections among things using metaphorand figural language, narrative medicine helps doctors to recognize patients and diseases, convey knowledge, accompany patients through the ordeals of illness--and according to Rita Charon, can ultimately lead to more humane, ethical, and effective health care.Trained in medicine and in literary studies, Rita Charon is a pioneer of and authority on the emerging field of narrative medicine. In this important and long-awaited book she provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the conceptual principles underlying narrative medicine, aswell as a practical guide for implementing narrative methods in health care. A true milestone in the field, it will interest general readers, and experts in medicine and humanities, and literary theory.
ISBN: 0195166752
Medical Apartheid by
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America's shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers--and indeed the whole medical establishment--with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
ISBN: 9780767915472
Brain on Fire by
An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller--and inspiration for the major motion picture starring Chloë Grace Moretz--that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman's struggle to recapture her identity. When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she'd gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened? In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Susannah tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family's inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn't happen. "A fascinating look at the disease that...could have cost this vibrant, vital young woman her life" (People), Brain on Fire is an unforgettable exploration of memory and identity, faith and love, and a profoundly compelling tale of survival and perseverance that is destined to become a classic.
ISBN: 1451621388
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST INFLUENTIAL" (CNN), "DEFINING" (LITHUB), AND "BEST" (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE * WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Entertainment Weekly * O: The Oprah Magazine * NPR * Financial Times * New York * Independent (U.K.) * Times (U.K.) * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * Kirkus Reviews * Booklist * Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family--past and present--is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family--especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
ISBN: 9781400052189
Intersectionality, Sexuality and Psychological Therapies by
This book explores the diversity in lesbian, gay, and bisexual lives, with the aim of opening up therapists' understanding of this diversity so that they can work in an ethical, supportive and non-discriminatory way with these individuals. Offers a comprehensive look at diversity within LGB populations, including the interactions between different areas of social difference using contemporary approaches Focuses on the practitioner, illustrating concepts with vignettes and case studies for implementing practical applications Emphasizes gender balance, fully exploring both male and female perspectives on each topic Encompasses different perspectives, including critical health psychology, discursive psychology, intersectionality, critical and cultural theory, and post-colonial discourse, while remaining accessible to all
ISBN: 9781119967606
