Trout Library Blog

If you are looking for topic ideas or general information about a particular subject, the Credo Reference database is a good one to use. It contains full-text entries from a multitude of reference sources, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, manuals, handbooks, and more. While Credo Reference is a good database to use to begin your research, the information that you will find in it will tend to be basic. You should always search further for more in-depth and/or academic resources.

To access Credo Reference, click on the Databases icon under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage. This will bring you to an alphabetical list of all of our databases. Scroll down to Credo and select it. Since Credo is a subscription database, you will need to enter a username and password if you are off campus. To find this information, log into Harcum Hatch and click on the Quicklinks tab on the right-hand side of the page. Scroll down to Library Database Password List, click on the link, and choose the username and password for Credo Reference. A visual description of this process can be found on the Database Tutorials page.

Credo is easy to search. Simply enter the database and type your topic into the search box. (An advanced search option is available as well.) You will then be taken to a page with a list of results from various reference works. There are drop-down menus that you can use to limit your results by subject, date, length, and media type. Most of the links contain information about the topic followed by a bibliography. You can trace down the sources listed in the bibliography for further research. Credo also provides you with the citation of your chosen item in APA or MLA format. Articles can be saved, printed, or shared (by link or email). In addition, they can be read aloud or translated into different languages.

Another useful feature that you will find on the results page is a Mind Map of your topic. The Mind Map contains the term that you searched at the center with related terms branching out from it. The related terms are hyperlinked to their own list of resources, which can provide you with additional topic ideas, more aspects of the same topic, or ways of narrowing your focus. Find the Mind Map for the subject of climate change below:

More detailed instruction on the contents and use of Credo Reference can be found in our video database tutorial. Choose Database Tutorials under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage and then select Credo Reference.

Remember that if you have questions about this resource or any other, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, schedule a Zoom Reference session, or call us at 610-526-6085.

As October is National Dental Hygiene Month, this week we are going to profile a library database that would be especially useful to students in the Dental programs at Harcum: Lexicomp for Dentistry. This database will provide you with drug information that you may need for your studies and your career. In it you will find tools to help answer prescribing, diagnosis and treatment questions, with dental-specific pharmacology on prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and natural products. Although this version of Lexicomp contains material that is focused on the needs of people in the dental profession, students in other Allied Health programs should be able to find useful information in this database as well.

To access Lexicomp for Dentistry, click on the Databases icon under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage. This will bring you to an alphabetical list of all of our databases. Scroll down to Lexicomp and select it. Since Lexicomp is a subscription database, you will need to enter a username and password if you are off campus. To find this information, log into Harcum Hatch and click on the Quicklinks tab on the right-hand side of the page. Scroll down to Library Database Password List, click on the link, and choose the username and password for Lexicomp for Dentistry. A visual description of this process can be found on the Database Tutorials page.

To do a drug search in Lexicomp, simply enter the name of the drug into the search box, click on the blue search button, and then click on the link under Dental Lexi-Drugs in the upper left-hand corner of the resulting screen. You will be brought to a screen that contains a Dental Lexi-Drugs record, the main record in the database. The following are some features of a Dental Lexi-Drugs record:

• Brand names
• Generic availability
• Pharmacologic category
• Use, including off-label if applicable
• Allergy considerations
• Adverse reactions
• Effects on dental treatment and on bleeding
• Dosing for various categories of patients
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding considerations

The following is an image of the top portion of the Dental Lexi-Drugs record for Penicillin G Procaine (You would scroll down to view the rest of the record):

As you can see in the blue bar and hyperlinks across the top of the record, Lexicomp contains a number of other useful features. Some include:

• Drug alerts and interactions
• Drug I.D. (Enter characteristics of an unknown drug to help identify it.)
• Drug images
• Adult and pediatric patient education (Answers common questions patients may ask)
• Various types of calculators, including those for dosage and unit conversion
• Toxicology of substances

More detailed instruction on the contents and use of Lexicomp for Dentistry can be found in our video database tutorial. Choose Database Tutorials under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage and then select Lexicomp.

Remember that if you have questions about this resource or any other, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, or call us at 610-526-6085.