Researching Herbal Medicines


Hello and welcome.
To get started I would   like to acknowledge the Traditional owners 
of the land that I am presenting on today,   the Whadjuk Noongar People. Paying deep 
respects to Elders past, present and emerging. This video is a short demonstration 
of the herbal medicine resources   available through the Endeavor College Library.  I'm starting on the library website, 
available through the library tab in your LMS,   or you can search Endeavor library 
and find this page through the web.  I'm going to navigate to the Library 
Guides on the left hand side.  From this list of Library Guides,   I'm going to scroll down and select 
naturopathy.

Down the very bottom here. In this guide, you can see a 
number of tabs along the top   here. I'm going to select the Herbal Medicine tab.  This opens up to the Herbal 
Medicine Library Guide.  The resources I'm going to be taking you through 
in this session can be found in this box on the   left hand side here.

It's titled WHMF212 Herbal 
Monograph, because there is an assignment under   this course code that these sources are 
particularly helpful when researching.  However they are just genuinely great herbal 
medicine resources that are applicable to any   kind of research in this field. So if 
you're not studying this course code,   don't feel like this isn't going to be 
relevant; it just has been housed in this   box here to make it nice and easily accessible.
The databases that I'm going to be taking you   through are: Natural Medicines, the American 
Botanical Council and Martindale. These are   all modern herbal sources.

They can also 
be found in this tab here at the top:   Databases and Journals. They're just listed in a 
longer a longer list, so I've navigated to this   page here just because it's a lot easier 
to find them in this left hand side box. So the first resource I'm going to take you into 
is Natural Medicines, this first one here. I'm   going to click in here. You will be asked to log 
in with your student number and your LMS password.   This just ensures that you are an 
Endeavor student, because you can   just access this content from the web. 
I'm going to log in with my staff login. And this opens up to the 
Natural Medicines database.   So navigating from this landing page here, I'm 
going to go up the top and hover over databases,   this little tab up the top here. The very first 
one you can see me hovering over with my mouse, is   titled 'Food, Herbs and Supplements'.

If I click 
on this, it opens up to an alphabetised listing of   all the food, herbs and supplements that there is 
entries on in this database. The example that I'm   going to use for this session is Valerian. So 
I'm going to go along the top here select 'V',   and you can see Valerian is the first V entry we 
have in this list so I'm going to select my herb. So this opens up to the information 
page on this particular herb.   What I'm going to point out at the beginning, 
are these two sections at the top. So there is   some information on the scientific name which I 
can actually expand out to show more scientific   names. And then also here there is common names, 
and I open up this little drop down it gives me   a listing of other common names that this herb can 
be referred to. So already we're starting off with   multiple keywords that we could use to search in 
other databases.

You can navigate on the left hand   side to the particular area you're interested 
in, or you can just scroll down the page. There is safety information, 
adverse effects and effectiveness.  We can see from this very first entry insomnia is   listed as something that this herb 
is possibly effective at treating.  If I click on this little details one 
here, it'll open up to more information.  So natural medicines is a modern herbal 
source. It is also a secondary source database,   which means that the information it's collating 
here has been sourced through other journal   articles and research; then the database has 
collated that information together to make an   entry with more generalised information. 
So a snapshot of the research available.  You'll notice that in these paragraphs we have 
these little blue links, these are all references.  So all of these little numbers here are 
references to other articles/other research   that was used to write up this information.
If I click on one of them, I'm going to   click on this one here.

It takes 
us to the references to entry.  If I select view abstract – 
it will open up to a page like   this with more information about this source.
So you can see here that this is referencing a   randomized placebo-controlled trial, which means 
it's very likely a primary research article.  Sometimes there are free full-text access, 
available to these articles through the web.  So for example, you can see here 
there is a full text link here.  If this wasn't the case, and sometimes 
it's not. It's just sometimes there's   an open access record available on the 
web in full text, sometimes there's not.  If there isn't, I can always copy and 
paste the title or the DOI of this   article into a discovery search and see if 
the library has paid access to this content.  We're lucky in this case there is a 
free text link so if I click on this-  It opens up to the full text of this article.  And if I scroll down, you can see 
I've got the full information here.

I recommend Natural Medicines as a really 
good place to start your research. Because   it is a secondary source database, you can 
see the snapshot of research out there.   And it also has these other common names 
and scientific names listed at the top,   which provide you with more keywords you 
can use when searching other databases.  Looking down this list there are 
other points of interest such as:   dosage and administration information, drug 
interactions, as well as commercial products that   use this herb; and mechanisms of action as well.
The next database I'm going to take you through   is the American Botanical Council.

It's right 
underneath the Natural Medicines in this list.   You'll see underneath we have a 
username and password information.  So if I open up this modern herbal source, 
this is the landing page that we arrive   at. There is a pink little button at the 
top here that says 'login' if I hit this-  In this login I'm including that password 
we have sitting just underneath it here,   the username and password 
here, logging in with that. Now I have access to the full resource, you 
can see up the top here I'm logged in under   Endeavor College. Next I'm going to navigate to 
this little resources button up the top here,   and just hover over it. There are quite a few 
resources which are helpful in this source,   first one being HerbalGram. HerbalGram is 
a herbal medicines journal that publish   specifically in the field of herbal medicine.
There is also the Herbal Medicine Expanded   Commissions e Monographs.
If I click into this,   you'll see it opens up in an A to Z listing of the 
herbs that are listed in this particular resource.  If I scroll all the way down I do 
have an entry under valerian root.  And you'll see there is an entry in a very 
similar layout to what was in Natural Medicines.  We have an overview, description, uses, 
interactions with other drugs and side effects;   including a reference list at the end.
And you can see through the content here,   there are multiple resources being referenced, 
which are all listed in the references at the end.  So this is another secondary modern herbal 
resource.

And before I navigate away from this,   I'm just going to make sure I log 
out before I close the resource. The last modern herbal source we 
have in this list is Martindale   under the Medicine's Complete ebooks.
MedicinesComplete is an online host for ebooks,   and this research searches two online 
books: Herbal Medicines, which we have here,   and Martindale the Complete Drug Reference. 
You can search both of them at the same   time if you select both publications.
I'm going to search my keyword in here   just hit enter. And that will search both of these online books.  I have an entry in Martindale here which I 
can view just by clicking on the link here.  You'll see again it has a very similar 
layout to the other resources we were using,   with the subsections available on the left hand 
side here, and references included throughout.

I'm going to go back to my results list and 
have a look at the Herbal Medicines entry. You can see this has a bit more information,   quite a few more subsections available on 
the left hand side here. Again following a   very similar outline to what we've seen on 
the other resources we were researching in. Including synonyms,   herbal uses, dosage information,   possible side effects and drug interactions.
Again with a reference list available at the end.  A common question we get in the library 
is how to actually reference these   kinds of resources. So I'm going to 
navigate back to the library homepage. From the library homepage I'm going to select 
'Referencing', again in that left hand side list. And then from here I'm going 
to select the Knowledge Base.

The Knowledge Base houses questions that are 
maybe a little bit too specific for us to put in   a general referencing guide, but are still asked 
often enough that we feel we should have an answer   available that students can access themselves.
So I'm just going to type in 'Medicines Complete'. It's best to search this little box up 
the top here with very specific keywords,   because that's more likely to hit the entries we 
have in this little searchable Knowledge Base. The very first entry I have here is, how to 
reference something that is housed in Medicines   Complete, like those two ebooks are.

And you'll 
see underneath there's actually an entry on how to   reference Natural Medicines as well, which was the 
first database that I used in this presentation. So there is information on how to reference these 
kinds of resources through the library. Definitely   search the Knowledge Base, but if you're still 
confused or maybe you want to double check, feel   free to reach out to the Virtual Librarian or your 
campus librarian to double check your references. The last resource I want to point out on this 
Herbal Medicine LibGuide. I'm actually going   to scroll down and on the right hand side 
we have a box titled: Traditional Sources. Traditional Sources is also 
something we get asked about,   particularly when students are completing herbal 
medicine research. And we have an entire guide   dedicated exclusively to traditional sources.
If I click on this button here it will take   me to the guide. Alternatively, in this list 
of Library Guides that I got to just through   the Endeavour library homepage. We have a link 
to the Traditional Sources guide here as well. So both of those links take us to 
this guide here.

The great thing   about traditional sources is because they are 
older texts, they are often out of copyright.   Which means we can link to the full text of these 
resources without any copyright restrictions. So navigating this page, you can see we've 
broken these links into subject areas. Don't   feel like you have to stay in just one 
area, feel free to experiment. There's   just a lot of content and a lot of links 
through this Library Guide, we wanted to   make it a little bit less overwhelming.

So 
we've tried to break them up a little bit. The stars next to these resources, means that 
we've had students give us good feedback about   them in the past, and we found that they're 
particularly helpful resources. Again because   these are quite- it's quite a long list of stuff. 
Start with the ones that have been starred,   but again don't feel like you have to stick 
to that or stick to just one subject list.

A lot of the time you'll 
find there is some overlap. We do have a dedicated video on how to use these 
traditional sources, all of them appear a little   bit differently. Sometimes they'll be scanned 
books, sometimes they'll look like websites   where the content of a particular book has been 
digitised and uploaded to look like a web page. For example, I'm going to click into 
this Culpeper's Complete Herbal here.  This one is actually 
displayed like an actual book,   you can see the original book has been scanned. You can use the contents page to navigate to 
the particular section that we're interested   in. Or there is a little magnifying glass up the 
left hand side here, I'm going to click on this,   and this allows me to search inside this book. Again I'm just going to throw in my herb. And that actually scans all of the 
actual content in this book, and   brings back a list on the left hand side of where 
this keyword has been found within the book. I'm going to scroll down, I feel 
like this might be a good entry, yep.

And after clicking on that entry it opens up   to the section of the book where 
that particular word is sitting. The thing to remember when 
using traditional sources,   is the language used in these traditional texts 
will reflect the time that they are written. So sometimes searching the scientific name 
of particular herbs don't bring up results,   just because they're being referred to in a common   name that was very widely used at 
the time the text was being written. In that case we I recommend going back to that 
Natural Medicine database, having a look at   those other common names of the herb that you 
are researching, and trying those. If you're   not finding any entries in these resources 
with the current keywords that you're using.

Again, traditional texts can 
be a little bit difficult to   reference. Particularly because 
sometimes they'll have the authors   death date mixed in there, so you're not 
quite sure if it's the publication date   or the death date. Sometimes the titles of 
the books can be very long and convoluted. In which case we have also included 
referencing information for every   single one of the book resources.
If there's something like this which   is actually an online archive that houses our 
resources, there's not a reference list entry   for it. Because this isn't going to a particular 
resource, it's going to an online archive. But the books that are available, if 
you hover over these little 'i' icons,   APA 7 referencing information pops up here. Unfortunately, you can't copy and 
paste from these little boxes.   We wanted to include the referencing information 
and we found these little 'i' icons probably,   like, the least overwhelming, because there 
is already a lot of content on these pages. All you have to do is hover 
over this little 'i' icon,   copy the content that we have 
in this box here word for word,   and then update with the correct formatting.
Just the nature of these little pop-ups,   it doesn't let us italicise the book 
title or include a hanging invent.

So this is what it looks like to start with, this 
is just the straight referencing information.  If I was using that in an assignment, 
I would update it to look like this. So you can see I've included 
the hanging indent here,   and I've italicised the title of the book itself. This text is an interesting one because 
we do have an original publication date,   but it has actually been republished recently. So in that case, we include the republication 
date in our references to entry here,   and the original publication date at the end. Then for our in-text referencing, we include   both the original publication 
date and the republish date. Again this can be something that's a little 
bit tricky with these traditional sources,   but the referencing information is available 
through that guide like we have here. And if you do have any 
questions or aren't quite sure   before you submit your references, feel 
free to reach out to the library to check   your referencing.

You can either reach 
out to your campus librarian, or you can   use the virtual librarian chat on the 
right hand side of the website here. Or again, navigating back to the library 
homepage. You can book a consultation   with the librarian as well, and we can give you 
feedback on your research and your referencing. That concludes this presentation on a herbal 
medicine resources available through the Endeavor   Library. Thank you so much for watching 
and good luck with your future endeavours..

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