ULB Düsseldorf is made up of the Central Library and several branch libraries. You can find an overview here.

Media on the subject Medicine is located in the Medical Library, building 16.61 (O.A.S.E.), floor O4 – O8.

The books in the reading rooms are shelved systematically, i.e. according to subjects and within the subjects, according to subject areas and topics. The basis of the arrangement is the classification system which divides the fields of knowledge into main groups and subgroups and is expressed by a letter-number combination (classification number). Classification numbers are used for the books’ shelf numbers, and you can use them to search the catalogue thematically.

To search for literature, especially journal articles on a specific topic, you usually use interdisciplinary or specialized databases. Medicince subject databases can be found in ULB’s Database Information System (DBIS).

Here you will find a selection of useful information and tools for the preparation of systematic reviews in medicine.

Introductory information and practical instructions

You can find the library holdings on evidence-based medicine here.

Here you will find a glossary of relevant terms relating to systematic reviews.

This practical guide explains the basics for preparing a systematic review.

With the Cochrane Interactive Learning online course licensed for HHU, you can learn the entire process of creating a systematic review in self-study.

Research for systematic reviews

Licensed and freely accessible databases for researching medical articles can be found here.

An overview of databases from the health sector can be found here. Please note that not all databases are licensed for Heinrich Heine University. We will be happy to assist you in clarifying whether you can obtain access to a non-licensed database.

You can find inspiration for setting up a search strategy in the Cochrane Library. The search strategies for the systematic reviews contained therein are also documented.

To prepare your search strategy, you can use the Yale MeSH Analyzer or the PubMed PubReMiner to analyze the PubMed IDs of already known articles on your topic for frequently occurring MeSH terms, keywords, etc. and thus compile a set of search terms.

If you are searching in several databases for a systematic review, we recommend that you do not use the search filters embedded in the databases. Depending on the database, different fields are searched when filters are used, meaning that the search results from different databases cannot be compared with each other. Here you will find templates for various databases to formulate filters as search strings.