Occupational Therapy Subject Guide

This resource is limited in scope and should not be a substitute for the main research databases.  You will usually find articles indexed in OTDBase if you search using the recommended research databases such as Cinahl, Medline and Amed, however OTDBase may be useful if you want to find some relevant articles quickly. 

OTDBase is a collection of over 10,000 abstracts from 27 key occupational therapy journals starting from 1970.  It originates from Canada. Titles indexed include the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, British Journal of Occupational Therapy and Occupational Therapy International. 

OTDBase is available onsite in the University only, it is not available offsite. 

OTDBASE offers three methods to search for journal abstracts:

1. Keyword Search - search for one or more words you expect to find within the abstract.  This option retrieves a maximum of 100 results so you may need to use a range of search terms.

2. Topic Search - abstracts are categorised into main topics and subtopics.  This allows you to browse articles in each subtopic by selecting it from the drop down menu.  For example, select the subtopic 'Politics from the main topic  'OT Profession', then click the Go button to see the article abstracts

3. Advanced Search - You can narrow a search by journal title, article title, abstract, author and/or year.  Selecting the ALL option narrows your search considerably (it is like using AND in the standard research databases).  Selecting the ANY option means that any of your terms will be found, therefore your search will not be particularly specific (it is like using OR in the standard research databases). 

OTDBase contains references and abstracts of journal articles, rather than the full text.  It indexes some journals that are not in our Library connection so we may not have the full text of every article.   We should, however, have a significant number of full available articles from the searches that you carry out.

Clic on the title of an article to view the abstract.

Every article from your list of search results has a link to underneath the article details. 

Click on this link to find out whether we have the full text available from the Library's collection.  If we do, you will be offered a link to the full text.  If we don't, you will be offered the option to request the article as an interloan.  It is often worth typing the title of the article into Hunter, our library search service, or doing an internet search using the title of the article, to double-check your options before you proceed with an interloan.