This tutorial provides information on how to use EBSCOhost databases to conduct research. It discusses how to access EBSCOhost through the library website, search across multiple databases simultaneously or individually, and narrow search results through limiting by source, subject, date range, and other filters. The tutorial emphasizes how narrowing search parameters can greatly reduce large result sets to more manageable sizes for research purposes. It also explains how to identify full-text availability and whether the library has print copies of relevant journal issues. The overall goal is to help students improve their research skills and ability to efficiently use online research tools.

1. Using
EBSCOhost
Databases

2. About this Tutorial
Students:
This tutorial will help you:
• Access and perform research in EBSCOhost databases.
• Narrow search results to find needed information.
It should take you about 20 minutes to complete.
Faculty:
• This tutorial was made using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.
• This tutorial will help students
– Broaden their research abilities.
– Learn to use online research tools.
This tutorial meets the following ACRL standards:
1.1c 1.4b
1.1d 2.3c

3. What to watch for…
Notes –
These are to let you know
there is important information
you need to know about what
is being covered.

4. What is EBSCOhost?
• EBSCOhost is a service provides access to the full text of over 6,000
journals and periodicals in the fields of
education, business, health, law, and other academic disciplines.
• Linscheid Library subscribes to more than 90 EBSCOhost databases.
• Access to EBSCOhost is a project of the Oklahoma Library Technology
Network and is funded with state and federal funds through the
Oklahoma Department of Libraries.

5. How to Access EBSCOhost Databases
You can access the electronic resources by clicking on the „Articles &
More‟ icon. This icon takes you to a page with tabs across the top.
Most of the tabs are letters of the alphabet which that take you
to lists of databases that start with that letter. The rest of the
tabs allow you to find resources by type (such as newspaper
articles) or by subject ( „Resources by Major‟).

6. E-Resources by Title
Click EBSCOHost Web
Search to search multiple
databases at the same
time.
OR
Click on any of the tabs to find
lists of individual database
titles which you can search
individually.

7. Searching Multiple Databases
To use the databases:
1. Click the boxes
next to the
database(s) you
want to search.
2. Click “Continue” when
you have selected all
the databases you
want to search.
Remember this: All EBSCOhost
databases look the same and have
similar search functions. If you can
learn to search one of them, you
should have no trouble using all of
them.

8. Input your search terms and limit your results.
Limiting the results of your searches will help to narrow your topic. You can also
limit your search from your results page. This will be covered in the next few
slides.

9. Additional search terms can help narrow a search.
Too many results!
It would take a lifetime to sort
through all that information!
The search term is too general.
By adding elementary to
education and math as the
specific subject in
education that you want to
research, the results are
much more manageable.
Still, 14,000+ hits is a lot to
go through. Let‟s learn how
to narrow this even more.
Using quotation marks around a phrase tells the computer that you only want results that have those words if
they appear next to each other in an article. So instead of searching elementary and education, which would
return over 70, 000 hits, you have much better results as seen above. (Parentheses) can also be used.
Using an asterisk * tells the computer you want the results to include any words that have math in them, such
as math, mathematics, mathematician, etc. This is called a truncated or wild card search. For more
information check out the help option within EBSCOhost.

10. To narrow your results further you have several options.
On the left side of the results window you can narrow results by…
• Source (or format)
• Subject
• and many others depending on the databases and the
search
If we limit the results to just periodicals here is what is left:
Less than 1,000 of the previous 14, 000 are from periodicals
(journals and magazines). The rest are from
newspapers, books, and other materials.
Still, over 800 results may be a lot to look through. We can
narrow it further. Let‟s narrow by subject also.

11. In the initial search we used elementary
education and math* as search terms.
These search boxes are the same as
doing a keyword search in the library
catalog. It searches for these terms
everywhere in the record.
Then we narrowed the search by source or format.
If we add a subject search to narrow our results even more
you may notice that a lot of the same terms that we used for
the keyword search are there too.
But this time those terms are the ones chosen by an author or
publisher as important subject topics in the article. It is not the
same search and will narrow the results even more to only
those articles that have the chosen terms as subject topics.

12. keyword search
source or format
Now let‟s look at the result of a subject search if we choose
one of the options shown at the left.
Now we only have 58 articles left to look through. Much
more manageable! And if you find that the results are too
narrow you can go back to a previous results list by clicking
on the X to remove search terms.

13. There are other options available to LIMIT your
results too. Let’s take a look.
CATPAC limits the search to
ECU library items.
Full Text means the whole article
is available online to
view, save, or print.
Scholarly or Peer Reviewed Journals
narrow the search to articles written
by experts in the field.
You can move the sliders or type the
dates you want into the boxes to limit
the articles to specific publication
dates.

14. Take a moment to review.
Selecting CATPAC limits the search results to
publications for which at least some of the copies are
in the library.
The library may not have the specific issue that you are looking for.
Check the library catalog to be sure.
Full text limits the search results to only those
articles that are available in full-text format.
There are a lot of good articles that EBSCOhost may only
an abstract for, but if you plan ahead you can order these
articles through interlibrary loan.
Limiting the results to scholarly or peer reviewed journals
returns only results written by experts in the field.
You can also limit the results to a specific time span by
sliding the cursors to indicate the year or by typing in the year
you want.

15. Using the same search, and limiting the
results by choosing scholarly journals
published in the last 10 years, this is the
result:
From 10 million to 26 by narrowing and limiting your results. Not bad for just a few clicks.
You can undo any of these limiters if the results are not what you wanted or it returns too few
articles.

16. This is an example of
what your list of results
looks like.
Remember:
PDF Full Text means
that the full article can
be viewed, instead of
just an abstract.
This CatPac logo means that
Linscheid Library owns some
issues of this journal title.
Click the logo to find out of
the library carries the specific
issue you are searching for.

17. There are two types of full-text articles available on
EBSCOhost:
PDF
Click here to print
HTML
Click here to print

18. Thank you for viewing
this tutorial on
Using Ebsco Databases.