Images for Academic Presentations: Using ClinicalKey

Giving a presentation as part of a teaching role or to share your knowledge on the latest evidence in your specialty? The RCS Library can help!

A picture is worth a thousand words, and the right image can greatly enhance any academic presentation. Often, however, the time and effort required to find the right image can be overwhelming, resulting in text-heavy presentations and subpar images.

The RCS Library can help our members save time and mental energy when searching for that perfect image. The focus of today’s post is on using ClinicalKey to find images and videos to create more engaging presentations and posters.

ClinicalKey

ClinicalKey is a “Google-style” search engine that searches e-books, online journals, and databases to return the most relevant results for a query. In addition, ClinicalKey gives you access to millions of images and videos which can be saved for future use or exported and copied directly into your presentation.

To access many of these features you will need to have registered with ClinicalKey.

Searching for and saving images

To search for images on ClinicalKey, log-in (help), set the filter to “multimedia”, and search for your desired image.

Your search will return all the relevant images. For more information on the images in your search result, simply click on them. This will open up a window with a brief description of what is depicted and details on the image’s source.

To save the image, select the star icon within the image’s information window. You can also save the image by clicking the box in the image’s top right corner to select it, and then clicking the star icon in the image menu.

Alternatively, if you find an image in a journal article or e-book you are reading, click on the image to open its information window, and click on the star to save it.

To access your saved images, click on your drop down menu in the top right corner of your screen and select ‘Saved Content’.

All your saved images will be stored here. This provides an easy way to access them in the future without repeating your search, and a way to compare several different images. It also remembers which items you have saved, so you won’t save the same thing twice.

Exporting images

While you can email or print an image straight from the image menu in ClinicalKey, to export an image you must first assign it to a presentation. While this may seem irritating initially, don’t let it put you off. It’s a very quick process and if you have a lot of images it ultimately saves you time.

To assign an image to a presentation simply select the image and press the ‘Add to Presentation’ icon in the image menu. This will prompt you to select a presentation to save the image to.

If this is the first image from ClinicalKey that you are adding to your presentation, simply add the presentation name and click ‘Add and view presentation’. This will take you through to the Presentation Maker.

Alternatively, if you are not ready to go to the Presentation Maker, simply click ‘Add’.

The Presentation Maker - which can also be accessed via the drop down menu in the top right corner - allows you to export the images. To do this, click the export button next to the image you want to export. This will download the image, its description and its copyright information straight to your device in a PowerPoint document. You are then free to copy the contents of the download into your own presentation.

As long as you keep the copyright information with it, you are allowed to use the image and its description for non-commercial purposes. You are free to delete the description, and the Elsevier and ClinicalKey logos.

If you have any trouble, please contact the library via library@rcseng.ac.uk, but for now, have fun presenting!

Sophie Gibbs, Information Specialist

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