Barbour Index: Health and Safety Information
Service
Introduction – What is Barbour?
Barbour contains full-text legislation, guidance and technical documents covering health and
safety information. It is a valuable source for students and researchers in Health and Safety
information, as well as being essential for practitioners.
How to access Barbour
1. Choose Databases from the library homepage. Search for the term “Barbour” in the
‘Finding eResources by Title’ box.
2. Click on the blue “Go” button.
3. Click on the title Barbour Health and Safety.
Enter your UoB username and password. (If you are unsure of your password go to:
http://www.bradford.ac.uk/it-services/help/password/).
The first time you log in you will need to complete a reference form so you can save individual
searches and bookmark documents you may want to refer to later. At the bottom of this form
are checkboxes to select if you want to be informed about developments to the Barbour
service. Unless you are a health and safety practitioner it is recommended that you TICK ALL
of these boxes to prevent you receiving unwanted emails. Read the license agreement and
click on AGREE.
You will then be taken to the search screen. There is an online tutorial available on the right of
the screen if you want to work through it.
Searching Barbour
There are two search types, keyword and advanced. A keyword search is suitable for most
purposes, but for some searches you may find the limiting options available in the advanced
search tool useful.
By keyword
Keyword search allows you to enter the key topics you are interested in. It is worth spending
some time thinking about what you are looking for; and the alternative terms you may want to
use to ensure you return the most relevant results.
The University of Bradford retains copyright for this material, which may not
be reproduced without prior written permission. If you need to view this
document in an alternative format or have any comments on the content
email: [email protected].
Screenshots reproduced by permission from CMP Information Ltd.
February 2014
Barbour Index: Health and Safety Information Service
Barbour will automatically suggest alternatives for misspelt words.
You can combine terms in both the Keyword and Advanced searches with:

AND - this combines two topics allowing you to search for records containing both. It is
useful for narrowing down a search. (If you want to use ‘AND’ you need to ensure you
include it, as unlike Google; Barbour automatically searches with an ‘OR’ if two terms
are entered).

OR - is used to broaden a search where there are two equivalent terms.

To search for an exact phrase put it in “Quotation marks”.

To search for variants of a word you can truncate your term using an asterisk, i.e.:
manag* will search for manage, manager, managed, management, managing etc.
Advanced search
The Advanced search allows you to limit searches by publication date, publisher, document
type etc.
Results
The results are displayed in the main body of the screen. They are displayed by relevance, but
you can use the ‘Sort’ command at the top of the list of results to change the order in which
they are displayed i.e. by year, publisher etc.
To view a result click on the title, this opens a PDF version of the publication.
The information icon
shows additional document information (publisher contact details etc.).
The summary icon opens a brief PDF document which covers the main points of the
document. This summary document has been written by staff at Barbour.
Greyed out content – some results may display as greyed out content – this means they are
not available online or within the subscribed dataset. Inter-Library Loans
(http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/services/inter-library-loans/) will be able to obtain these for
you.
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Barbour Index: Health and Safety Information Service
“Refine by topic” with the topic browser
The topic browser in the left hand panel of the results screen allows you to see how your
results are distributed across a variety of topics. This is useful for giving you ideas on how to
refine your search and narrow down results. To refine by a topic, click on the title of the topic in
the topic list at the top left of the results screen.
Bookmarking, printing and saving results
There is no way of marking several records in a set of results to print or download later.
Although you can bookmark results and save the document to your folder, click on the
bookmark icon and add it to your ‘Personal Folder’ by clicking the insert icon.
These bookmarked items are re-searched for when you return to them. If you are a practitioner
this ensures you always have the latest version of the guidance or legislation. If your interest in
the document is academic and you require permanent access to a particular version it is
recommended that you save a copy of the document for your own reference.
To print results select ‘Print current’ (current page) or ‘Print All’ (full set of results) from the
top of the results list. This will reformat your results to print, if you want to save the results
click on ‘Print All’ and then save from the ‘File - Save As’ option in your browser.
Printing / saving whole documents
To print and / or save the full text of the documents use the toolbar within the PDF reader.
My recent documents
Barbour remembers the documents you recently consulted. Click on ‘My Recent Documents’
on the right of the screen under ‘My Barbour.Info’ to go to a list of recently viewed documents.
Saving searches / setting up alerts
Barbour does not yet offer a search alert service, but you can save time by saving searches
that you may want to revisit in the future.
If you want to save a search to re-run it at a later date, click on the ‘Save Search’ button, to the
right and just below the search box on the search screen. Enter a name for the saved search
and then click the information icon
to add it to your personal folders.
To re-run a saved search click on ‘My Saved Searches’ on the right of the screen, and click on
the title of the search you wish to re-run from the list.
Barbour Briefings and Guides
Barbour Briefings are documents written by the staff at Barbour; recent health and safety news;
and updates in legislation etc. You can search these from the ‘Briefings’ option at the very top
right hand of the screen. If you want to regularly receive the Barbour Briefings you can request
them by email by selecting the check box at the bottom of the ‘My Details’ screen, under
‘contact preferences’.
The Barbour Guides (again accessed from the ‘Guides’ link at the top right hand of the screen)
are written by staff at Barbour and are a brief introduction to key health and safety topics,
including lists of relevant documents. Contents of the guides are fully searchable.
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Barbour Index: Health and Safety Information Service
Current awareness service / newsfeeds
Newsfeeds can be set up using the ‘My Preferences’ option, which is one of the tabs across
the top of the screen. There are 3 sections to ‘My Preferences’:

Search options – you can use this to select the datasets you want to search. It is
recommended that this is left at “Subscribed Services only”.

Newsfeeds – this offers email newsfeeds of breaking news in a variety of areas. It is useful
to practitioners or those researching a topic over a period of time.

Accessibility – Here you can choose to modify the background colour and text size within
predefined limits.
Further information
Online help is available from the ‘Help’ option at the top of the screen. You can also contact
your subject librarian for assistance: http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/about-us/contactus/#d.en.70304.
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