What is the Literature Searching Service? 

Need to find evidence-based information to support patient care, research, guideline and care pathway development, audit or policy documentation?  Want to find up-to-date material on a topic of interest? 

Our professional librarian can carry out searches on your behalf to identify journal articles, guidelines, systematic reviews and other evidence-based information to help meet your requirements. This service might be useful if you are searching a complex topic, struggling to find material (or narrow down the amount you find) or if you simply want to make sure you are getting the best results.

The results of a search will be a list of bibliographic references with abstracts and/or links to websites (as appropriate to the topic). This will be emailed to you.

Who is this service available to? 
Literature Searches are free and available to all staff who are currently employed by:

• Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• other NHS trusts in the East of England
• Cambridge University
• MRC staff

If you are a student on a course of study, this service is not available to you. It is likely that your university requires you to develop your own databases searching skills, as part of the agreement of the academic programme you are on.  However, please contact us directly if you wish to have help with your search. 

How do I request a Literature Search? 
To request a Literature Search please complete the Literature Search request form.

Please submit as much information as possible about your search topic so there is no delay in processing your request. 

If you encounter any difficulties in completing this form please do not hesitate to contact us. 

How soon will I receive the results of my search? 
You will receive the result of your search within 3 working days (Monday to Friday) from the date of receipt, or by a mutually agreed date. It’s likely that the librarian will contact you directly to clarify some aspect of your question.

Direct patient care search

Those requests directly for patient care will be actioned as a matter of service priority.

Please note: all of the above service standards are subject to staffing levels. 

How can I obtain any full text copies of references? 
There are various ways to obtain full text copies of references from the results of your search. We have outlined some below. Please do not hesitate to contact us should you require further assistance.

Journal articles 
Details of how to obtain a full text journal article are available.

Document Delivery 
If we don’t have the papers you need, we can order them from other libraries via our Document Delivery Service. 

Comments or feedback about this service 
The Medical Library is continually trying to improve and develop our services. We will contact you a month after you have received the results of your search, to ask you if the information we provided has been of use to you and to enquire if you have used it to inform your clinical work, provide or cascade information to your colleagues, change practice, etc. 

If you have any comments about this particular service in the meantime, please let us know.