SFS 101: Strategies For Success: Online Databases

A library database is an online resource that the library subscribes to that contains articles and information from print sources such as magazines, newspapers, journals, and reference books. 

    Databases are not "internet" sources (usually)

Although you access our databases from the internet, most of the articles you find in them are reprinted from real live print sources. Most of the things you find in our database cannot be found by searching Google or Yahoo. These are subscription services that the library pays for. They are every bit a part of our library's collection as the books on our shelf, and unless you want to buy your own subscription, you must go through the library's website to access them. Look carefully at what you find--the description will be listed--book, journal article, 

You must login to use these databases from off-campus

Because these subscription services are paid for by the library, you can use them from any Lake Land computer on campus and you won't have to login. But if you are trying to access these from an off-campus computer (from home, or work, or Iceland), you will have to log in to prove that you are associated with Lake Land college. You do this by entering the same login and password that you use for IRIS.

The Lake Land Library subscribe to dozens of different databases that cover a wide range of subjects, so choosing the right one for your information need is important to finding the best information.  For instance, you're not going to find very much information on hybrid cars if you're searching a nursing database.

On our Databases webpage, you can find links to all of Lake Land's subscription databases. At the top of the page are our major vendors, which combine several smaller databases within them.  (ProQuest, for example, searches many different databases at once.)  Our general databases/vendors include ProQuest, Gale, and EBSCO.   

In addition to the general vendors, we have a list of more subject-specific databases organized by subject.  

Here are some general tips and strategies you can use whenever you search a library database.

• Don't type an entire sentence into the search box. Think of the most important two or three words that deal with your topic. The more words you use, the fewer hits you will get, and vice-versa.

• Be flexible with your search terms. Think of synonyms, related words, and broader and narrower terms. Think of all the words other people might use to talk about your topic.

• Be careful with spelling. Computers do exactly what you tell them to do, so if you spell a word wrong, it doesn't know it. It's looking for exactly what you typed.

• Pay attention to which search field you are searching. Where is the database looking for your search terms? In a subject heading? In the title of the article? In the full-text of the article? These will all bring up different results.

• Most databases use a controlled vocabulary with official subject headings. This means that they've organized all the articles into topics with subdivisions, narrower, broader, and related terms. You can use these subject headings to get ideas and guide your search. This will enable you to get articles that are about your topic, rather than the ones that just mention it.

• On the other hand, sometimes it's necessary to use a keyword search (or "all text") to find your search terms anywhere in the article. Keyword searches should be used in these cases:
  • When the thing you're searching for is so rare (or new) that there are no official subject headings for it (yet.)
  • When you're looking for a very specific phrase. For example, there might be tons of articles that list garlic as a subject, but you're only looking for things that mention aged garlic extract. This might be too specific to have its own subject heading.
  • When the index you're searching doesn't have a controlled vocabulary.  Some types of articles (such as newspapers) simply don't have a controlled vocabulary. In these cases, keyword searching is your only option.
  • When you can't figure out what phrases are being used by the database to refer to your topic. In this case, you could use pearl growing (see below.)

• One technique that librarians and researchers use is called pearl growing. This is when you use the subject headings listed for an article to get more ideas. For example, let's say you're looking for articles on low-carb diets. You did a keyword search on carbohydrates and brought up 5,000 articles that mention them. The first few articles aren't really about your topic, but the fourth title is exactly what you're looking for. You look at the official subject headings for that article and one of them is High Protein Diet-- Evalution. You never would have thought of the phrase "high protein diet evaluation" on your own, but now you know the language that this database is speaking. You can use this knowledge to find similar articles. Conduct a subject search for High Protein Diet -- Evaluation and get a complete list of all the articles in the database that deal with that topic.

• There are many ways to expand or limit your search. (Expanding means you'll get more articles, and limiting means you'll get fewer articles.) Often, databases will let you limit your search to scholarly journals, to full-text articles, or to certain dates.
  

Articles in a database will be available in:

• Full Text: the entire text of the article (sometimes with pictures) reproduced on a web page in the database.
  

• PDF Full Text:  An actual photocopied image of the page exactly as it appeared in the original source.

• Abstract: a short summary of an article.  You can read this to see if it's worth trying to get the full-text.

• Citation: Information on how to find the article somewhere else. A citation includes things like the title, author, source, date of publication, and page numbers.