Textbooks are extremely useful when you need background information on a topic. Consider starting your search with a textbook when you are investigating a new area. Ideally, you would be able to do a search across all of the content in the collection of online textbooks at UNC-Chapel Hill. Unfortunately, that is not the case right now. So you will need to know how to find books covering specific subjects or disciplines. Three main collections of electronic medical textbooks are linked from the Clinical Reference page.

Watch the video clips for help in navigating and and searching these textbook collections.

• Books@Ovid:

• MD Consult Reference Books:

• STAT!Ref:

Two frequently-used, authoritative textbooks are linked separately on the Clinical Reference page:

• Emergency Medicine (by Dr. Judith Tintinalli, Chair UNC-CH Department of Emergency Medicine)

• Harrison's Online (Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine)

Dr. Tintinalli's book is considered by many to be the definitive text in Emergency Medicine. Look for chapters in this text that will help with your understanding of the "Justin Williams" case in the Clinical Applications course.

Harrison's has been a standard textbook in Internal Medicine for many years. It will be particular valuable for your clinical cases since it includes discussions of basic science, pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment on a wide variety of diseases and conditions. It also includes lots of helpful charts and graphs.

One other specific textbook that will be quite useful is known as MMBID, The Metabolic and Molecular Bases of Inherited Disease. MMBID is a well-known compendium on genetic disorders, including information on diagnosis, screening, genetic counseling, gene therapy and pharmacogenomics. You will find it to be essential for the "Isabel's Developmental Delay" case in Molecules to Cells.

Finding more e-books

There are also many other electronic medical books in the UNC Libraries' collection. For example, the UNC Libraries have recently purchased eBrary, which has over 30,000 books, of which about 8,000 are on medical subjects. The best way to find out exactly what is available is to use the link for searching the library catalog for e-books. Try searching on a keyword such as epidemiology or genetics to get a sense of the excellent choices you have with the many online books provided by the UNC Libraries.

Finding electronic journals

There are thousands of e-journals in the UNC Libraries' collection. To find out about specific titles, use the E-Journal Finder or search the online catalog. You can also browse for journals by subject area.
Search tip: you will need to search on full journal titles, not abbreviations. (The online catalog does have some links for journal abbreviations but not a complete list). The e-journal finder page provides a link to help with looking up complete journal titles.

• View this video for a look at using the E-journal Finder: