Database Guides
AMED
AMED is an alternative medicine database designed for students, researchers and clinicians looking to learn more about alternative treatments. It contains details of relevant journal articles from over 500 journals many of which are not indexed elsewhere.
The content provided in AMED is produced by the Health Care Information Service of the British Library. Among the subjects covered are complementary medicine, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, palliative care and rehabilitation.
Finding Journal Articles
When searching for journal articles, break down your topic into keywords and phrases.
Enter these words and phrases on different lines. Place quotation marks around phrases to ask the database to find the words within the quotation marks together as a phrase.
Example
If you are looking for articles on the use of homeopathic remedies in treating hay fever enter the word homeopathic on one line and the phrase "hay fever" on another line. If you use the wildcard symbol * on the root of homeopath* then you will find all forms of the word (including homeopathic and homeopathy) as the same time - see the top tip box on the right.
At the bottom of the search screen you will see Search Options. In most cases you will not need to use these options, and most can be applied once you see your list of results. Once you have entered relevant keywords and phrases, click Search to view a list of results.
Top Tip!
If your search results are disappointing, try to think of different ways of expressing your topic.
If you add the wildcard symbol * to the root of a word you can find all words beginning with the letters in front of it (e.g. homeopath* would find homepath, homeopaths, homeopathic and homeopathy at the same time).
Instead of "hay fever" you could try pollinosis or allergic rhinitis.
Click on the title of a particularly relevant article to view any summary provided and see what subject terms have been used to describe that article. You can then search on those terms.
To find out more about how to plan a search, creating search strategies and using different search techniques, explore our search techniques guide.
Narrowing Down your Search
You use the options on the left of the screen under Refine Results to narrow down your search.
You may wish to slide across the bar under Publication Date to limit your results to those from a particular time period.
Further down this section you may find options to narrow your search by:
- source (type of material)
- subject
- publication
- language
Please note that a limit, once applied, stays in place until you click to remove it.
Getting the Full Text
You can see further details on any article listed on AMED by clicking on the title of the article.
Unfortunately, AMED does not contain full-text articles. However, you can find out if the full-text of an article is available in the library's collection by clicking on Full Text @ RGU / Check LibrarySearch for full text options to check.
If we have the full text article as part of another subscription, then you will be redirected to it. If we do not have the article, you will be told Full Text Not Available.
You may still be able to get the article, by requesting an Inter-Library Loan (ILLs).
Remember to sign in to LibrarySearch to see this option. View our inter-library loans page to find out more.
