The Cochrane Library is the main product of the Cochrane Collaboration, "an international not-for-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available".

The Cochrane Library is one of the prime international and independent sources of evidence-based medicine information.

There are actually several resources in the Cochrane Library; the two main ones are:

• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) (Cochrane Reviews)
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Cochrane Central).

Cochrane Reviews, as systematic reviews are important because they are one of the higher levels of evidence on which clinical decisions are based. All Cochrane Reviews are available in full-text.

Other resources and features include:

• Cochrane Clinical Answers - short, clinically-focussed entry-points to research
• Special Collections - curated collections on specific healthcare topics
• search access to the Epistemonikos health evidence database.

The Cochrane Library is a subscription resource but, under an agreement with the Australian government, is free to use in Australia. So you will be able to use it even after you have finished your studies.

At the home screen, you can browse the Cochrane Reviews by topic, or by Review Group, but it's probably best to click on the Advanced Search link at the top right of screen. The Advanced Search screen looks like this:

• You can add lines of search if you wish.

• The default is to search within Title, Abstract, and Keyboards; you can change this if you wish.

• The default is to a keyword search so if you wish to search for a phrase you need to enclose it in double quotation marks.

• You don't need to use truncation because the database does it for you. (When you have run a search you will be told: "Word variations have been searched. This can be switched off in the Limits panel) 

• You can do a proximity search: the proximity operator is NEAR/n, where n is the number of words you specify. Eg. "speech pathology" NEAR/4 australia

• You can apply various limiters to your search, by clicking on the Search Limits link below the search box(es).

• Full-text access to results vary from database to database. The Cochrane Reviews (in CDSR) are available in full-text but clinical trials (in Cochrane Central) are citation-only.

• The Advanced Search screen has a tab for Send to Search Manager, where you can create and save complex multi-line searches.

• You can use the Medical Terms (MeSH) tab to "look up" and search by MeSH terms. For help with MeSH searching in Cochrane Library, see the Search help button on the Medical Terms (MeSH) tab.

The Cochrane Library Help has a section on How to use the Cochrane Library

That page links in turn to The Cochrane Library Training Hub.