1. TOOLS AND CONCEPTS FOR
DIGGING DEEPER
Data Basics

2. The Research Question
 All research begins with a question?
What’s your problem?
 Question: Does alcohol provide health benefits if used
in moderation? YES? NO?
 Position: Small amounts of alcohol can improve health.
 What are some benefits of alcohol use?
 What are some problems alcohol use can cause?
 What are some types of diseases it can prevent?
 What are some diseases it can cause?
 Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

3. Keywords and the Research Question
 The literature review is the information that
gives you the big picture for answering the
question.
Question: Does alcohol provide health benefits if
used in moderation?
Possible Keywords:
 drinking and health benefits
 alcohol and moderation
 alcohol and heart disease
 alcohol and liver disease

4. What Keywords do!
Keywords help us in 3 big ways!
 They let you focus on specific aspects for the issue
 They use variations of terms relating to your topic
 They relate the terms together so the database will
retrieve articles that give you information about how
the terms are related in practice

5. Ebscohost
Databases
(vendor)
Academic Search
Premier
(General Database)
ATLA Religion Database
(Specialty) Biological Abstracts
(Specialty)
Consumer Health Complete
(Specialty)
The Database
Model
Warehouse Distributor
Big Box Stores
Specialty Store
Specialty Store Specialty Store

6. The Web Model

7. What’s in (Brick) Stores
File/Table
Company Item Price
Aeropostale Crest Graphic Jersey $15.95
American Eagle Eagle Plaid Poplin $24.95
Baby Phat Liquid Legging $19.90
Hollister Zuma Beach $49.50
Record
American Eagle Eagle Plaid Poplin $24.95
Fields

8. What’s in (LibraryData) Stores
File/Table
Author Title Location
King, Stephen Christine PS3561.I48
Myer, Stephenie Twilight PZ7.M57188
Poe, Edgar Allen Tales PS2612 .A1
Record
Myer, Stephenie Twilight PZ7.M57188
Fields

9. The Database F.A.C.E.
 Find
 Any
 Content
 Everywhere
Or functionally speaking,
Search, Sort, and Save
Search Blanks, Fields, Limiters, Print, Email, Download, Export

10. The F.A.C.E -Database
Search
Save
Sort
Save
Sort
Search
Sort
There are a number of ways to search sort and save database information,
some features do more than one thing.

11. Basic Search Techniques
 Boolean logic: Boolean logic is the ability to
connect search terms using and, or, and not. These
connectors help searchers widen or narrow their
search as needed. The "and" connector is used to
narrow a search. The "or" connector is used to widen
a search. The "not" connector narrows a search by
not including items containing the specified terms.
The library catalog is a database, so are the journal databases,
both of them use similar techniques to get to information like Boolean Logic,
truncation, quotations, and field searching!

12. Advanced Searching
 Quotation marks: Quotation marks allow searchers to look for
specific phrases. For example, if you search for “global warming",
you should retrieve only pages with that exact phrase. Most, but not all,
search engines allow you to focus your search using quotation marks.
 Truncation: Truncation allows searchers to look for various forms of
the same word. For example, by truncating "manage" you will find
information on "manage," "manager," "managers," "management," and
more. Some databases, especially on the internet, truncate
automatically. Others require you to use a truncation symbol (such as
an asterisk) to indicate you wish to search for all forms of a word.
 Proximity searching: Proximity searching allows you to specify how
close together in a sentence or paragraph you want your search terms
to be. Ex: war near 5 iraq - Depending on the database, this will
retrieve records with the terms near 5 words of each other (in any
order).
 Field searching: Field searching allows you to restrict your search to
specific fields in a database, such as “title,” "author," or “text“
(anywhere in the text).