First Year Library Databases Presentation
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Library instruction for a first year class, focusing on how to navigate databases, including library book catalog and library scholarly databases
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First Year Library Databases Presentation
- 1. LIBRARY DATABASES for STRATEGIC EXPLORATION sam alfrey, research and instruction librarian
- 7. broader terms related words narrower terms synonyms
- 8. NOT A SOURCE
- 23. Term A: Social Media Term B: Love
- 26. Research Services at Whittier College One-on-one research consultations with Librarians, M-F, 10am-4pm Email reference@whittier.edu to schedule an appointment
Editor's Notes
- What makes a database a “database”? It’s a lot of information linked at ONE location, and more importantly, it is searchable. You can search in a variety of ways in order to find something very specific. If you wanted to find a book on Amazon, but you weren’t sure what exactly you wanted, you can type in anything. A title, an author, a theme, a related word, and Amazon will link you with specific information (or data). The searchability, the ability to FIND information, is what differentiates a database from an endless mess of information. It’s organized and linked together. A song title is linked to an album which is linked to an artist. The information comes to you as a unit, not its components.
- Even if you have never seen or used a scholarly database before, because you have familiarity accessing popular databases, the scholarly databases won’t be all that new to you. The concepts you use to search popular databases are the same concepts you will use to search scholarly databases.
- Even the Whittier book catalog is a database! It works the same way, too, in giving you specific information once you type in search terms.
- You can access a lot of different databases through Whittier College. If you are on campus, you are already logged into the databases on any computer that has access to Whittier’s internet. If you are off campus, you can get to the databases using your MyWhittier log-in information. It’s important to know that the databases are accessible to you through your tuition. Part of everyone’s tuition goes to the library budget, and the library purchases subscription databases for you to use. Because the scholarly databases require a subscription, Google cannot access them! Google can only access a very small portion of the web, less than 20%. That means 80% of web content is unaccessible by Google. Scholarly databases are part of this 80%. If you only use Google for your research, you are missing out on a large portion of information. Take advantage of your tuition and the subscriptions. A better understanding of how to use databases means your research will be more thorough and your papers will be stronger because of it.
- When you access a database, you are talking with a computer. You are trying to match the exact language that a scholar used in his or her article. If you are researching relationships, but the writer never used that word, then you won’t get that article. Think of how a writer might use language. What are alternative terms you can think of? You might have to do multiple searches, using many combinations of words, in order to find articles that help your research and writing. First search results are rarely perfect matches!
- If you are struggling to think of keywords, utilize Google and the open web, including Wikipedia. Of course, Wikipedia is not a source. We never want to say “According to Wikipedia…” It can be editted by any person at any time, which means it’s not the most credible source. However, it does provide you context and background for a topic. Go to Wikipedia and jot down some terminology. It can give you lots of vocabulary that you can then bring into the scholarly databases! Wikipedia does have references at the bottom-- these can be good to use, but they might not be great sources. If you use those sources, you are responsible for viewing them critically to make sure that the material is accurate and authoritative.
- One way to question material on the Open Web (such as Google or Wikipedia) is to ask: “Does it pass the CRAAP test?” Is it current information, is it relevant information? Does it come from an authoritative source (have you heard of the source before? Maybe do some extra research into WHO wrote it)? Is it accurate information that you can fact check with many other sources? And why does the information exist? If there are a lot of advertisements on the page, it might be Clickbait which exists to sell advertisements rather than to be informative-- this is a bad source!
- Wardman Library home page. Memorize this URL, or bookmark it on your personal computer!
- General information will have our hours. Find books and articles is a great place to start your research. Research Help has lots of great aids in case you get stuck. Services and Support is about policies and not a link you’d go to often. If you ever get stuck, Click the Ask A Librarian link in the right hand corner! Librarians are available in lots of ways: in-person, on phone, via email, text chat, and instant message.
- The main search bar on this page is a search called DubSearch. It searches all of our databases, and our book catalog. Sometimes you might come across books we don’t have, or articles we don’t have full-text for. It is a good tool because it covers a lot of resources at one time. It is an imperfect tool because it can be confusing!
- Librarians recommend going to the purple box, to find books and articles.
- If you’re looking for a book, you’ll find it in the Library Catalog. The word “Catalog” comes from when people found books in a card catalog: every library book was written on a card. Now, the card catalog is digitized, but we still use the word catalog. It operates like any other database!
- If you know what book you want to find, use the drop down menu to search by title or author, it’ll get you there faster! If you want to browse books, use the “keyword” search. If you’re having difficulty, you can go to advanced search to use filters to figure out how to search more pointedly.
- For this search I just searched “social media” as a keyword. Boxes on the screen show important information. The icons on the left tell you if it is a print book or an e-book. E-books are accessible by clicking the title of the book, and then finding the “EBSCO e-book” link, usually on the bottom of the page. You can then search the text of the book, for specific words! The number in the middle is a call number. It is like GPS for a book, and tells us where exactly in the library the book is located. To find a book yourself, you need the call number, it is even more important than the title or author, for you to get the book in the library book stacks. When you go upstairs, you’ll see call number ranges (IE, HM800-HP900) written on the side of the book shelf. Then you can determine that your book (HM851) is in that aisle. It also tells you that similar books will be nearby! The status of the book tells you if the book is available, if its online, if it is in Special Collections (ask a librarian, in this case). If the book is checked out, or if you get NO search results, check out Link+! We share our books with local Southern California libraries; which means they share their books with us, too! It is a way that you can get almost any book you want (included in your tuition price, no extra charges). The book usually arrives in 2 days, and you can have it for 2 weeks, renewable for another 2 weeks! Take advantage of it!
- If you’re looking for articles, a good route to go is the Databases A-Z page, on the “Find Books and Articles” section of the library website.
- Here, there is a drop-down menu. If you are taking an English course, but you know your topic fits under Gender Studies, then feel free to repeat the search multiple times! Read the database descriptions, because not ALL databases are perfect for EVERY topic.
- JStor is a classic database, that covers so many subjects! It is a good one to be familiar with, as it is very thorough.
- Always, always find the “Advanced Search” option! You’ll see two search bars at the top. You can limit by language, dates, and item type, as well.
- Scrolling down, you can limit by discipline. You can search in any combination! If you don’t choose any, it searches ALL OF THEM. That might make it hard to find good articles.
- Next to the keyword, there is a drop down menu. Item Title is Article Title. Do you want the keyword to appear in the title of the article? That tells you the word is VERY important to the article. Abstract means the word appears in a short, 200 word summary about the article. If it appears in the abstract, the word is probably pretty important to the article! There is also a “full text” option. If the word appears in the full text, it might be mentioned one time in 30 pages. That might not be very helpful, but its worth considering for some instances. NOTE! I used quotes around the word “social media.” This means that the words are searched as a phrase, and not as separate items.
- Connecting the keywords is a box that contains the words “and/or/not.” These are called Boolean Operators. Consider how these terms relate to each other. It might be useful to control your search using these operators!
- Remember to check journal filters!
- Sometimes a simple search works just as well, too. For this search I just searched “OKCupid” and got 3 results. In the results you see a portion of the article, as well as all the citation information. If you want to view the article, click on the article title and it will bring you to the full text. You can also click “Download PDF” if you want to print it or save it to your computer, in a folder for the class you’re taking. The “Cite This Item” button is really helpful, as it generates an accurates citation for you automatically! You can just copy and paste the citation, so you don’t have to write it at the last minute before your paper is due ;)
- If you have any additional questions, please contact a librarian. We are excited to meet you and learn about what you’re interested in researching!