From the Library Homepage, click on the "Electronic Databases" link under the "Research" heading. If you are accessing the collection from off campus, you will be prompted for a username and password. The username is your student ID number and the password is the universal PIN number given out in information literacy instruction sessions. Call or email the library if you do not know the PIN.
You will be directed to the Electronic Resources page, which looks like this:
You can either select a subject area to view all databases with materials relevant to that area, or you can select a letter to view all databases that begin with that letter. Since you are reading this guide, you likely don't know what databases Bedsole Library subscribes to, and/or you are interested solely in doing research on a particular topic. Therefore, selecting a subject would be best. Click the gray dropdown arrow adjacent to the box reading "Select a Subject." Choose a subject from the available options.
Step 2: Choose a Database
You will be directed to a list of databases relevant to the subject you chose along with a description of each:
Seeing the long list of unfamiliar databases and not knowing exactly where you should go can be a bit daunting. Perhaps you've read the descriptions and still aren't sure where to begin. Don't worry: there isn't really a wrong choice. In fact, many of the databases have some overlap in their subscriptions (some content is shared), so you won't necessarily be missing out on everything in database X if you choose to search in database Y. That said, some content is exclusive to certain databases, and there are some instances in which some databases are better than others. For education, ERIC is the best place to start, for nursing CINAHL Plus, for religion, ATLA. You can always ask a librarian for assistance selecting a database.
For our purposes here, select Academic Search Premier, a quality database that covers many different subject areas and is provided through EBSCO.
Step 3: Search the Database
You will be directed to the EBSCO Search interface:
As you can see, there are numerous options to select and un-select. The Full Text limiter, a filter that limits your search results to full articles rather than just citations, is already checked. For the time being, instead of fiddling with available options, let's just perform a simple search. Type your search term into the search bar at the top of the screen and click the maroon "Search" button.
You will be directed to the search results screen that should look something like this:
Step 4: Drilling Down with Faceted Searching
Once again, there are a lot of options here. There are also a lot of search results! Who wants to wade through three thousand returns? Fortunately, there are several things you can easily do to narrow the scope of your search results. You could do a different, more specific search; however, it is useful to learn how to filter your results via "faceted searching." Faceted searching is simply the term librarians use to denote the process of placing one or more filters or limits on a search in order to increase the precision of the search results.
First, you can filter out results according to date. Many fields, specifically the hard sciences, require research to be current and do not consider anything older than five years to be acceptable for use in assignments. So, look for the range of publication dates near the top of the left hand sidebar. By clicking on either the sliding bar or one of the boxes, you will summon a box that will allow you to choose the dates If you limit the results to only those published within the last five years, then the number of results drastically reduces.
Next, you will want to limit the results according to publication type and filter out items that are not academic journals. On the left hand side bar, you will see a "Source Types" link. Click the arrow to drop down the initial options if they are not already displayed. Check the box next to the "academic journals" tag and click the maroon "Update" button. Now, things like book reviews and newspaper articles will be filtered out of your search results.
Another faceting search technique is to filter the results by subject. Our initial search gave us articles in various fields, but we want to limit our results in this area. Each article in this particular database is indexed (classified or "tagged") twice, according to two different sets of metadata. By clicking on the "Subject" and "Subject: Thesaurus Terms" links on the left hand side bar, you drop down a menu with some options including a "Show More" link. Clicking "Show More" summons a box containing various terms and empty check boxes:
Each of these terms represents a tag applied as a classifier to various articles in the database. Check any boxes that are relevant to your research. Click the maroon "Update" button.
There are other ways to employ the faceted searching technique, but these few steps should be sufficient to get you started. Feel free to experiment or ask a librarian for assistance.
Step 5: Select an Article
Once you have narrowed your results, it is time to select one or more articles to either save or print. Once you have found a promising-sounding article, click on the title to be directed to the full bibliographic record:
From here, you can read the abstract in order to gain an idea of the author's objective(s) for the article. On the right hand side bar, there are buttons enabling you to email a link to this article to yourself, to print the bibliographic record, and even to get proper citation information in a variety of formats. In the main section of the page, you will notice several text links in all caps, adjacent to the heading, "Subject Terms." These are descriptors that this article was tagged with, and by clicking on one you can view all articles in this database that were also tagged with that descriptor.
To acquire the article itself, simply click on the PDF Full Text link in the left hand sidebar. You can print or save from your PDF viewer software.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Go to the Electronic Databases Link
From the Library Homepage, click on the "Electronic Databases" link under the "Research" heading. If you are accessing the collection from off campus, you will be prompted for a username and password. The username is your student ID number and the password is the universal PIN number given out in information literacy instruction sessions. Call or email the library if you do not know the PIN.
You will be directed to the Electronic Resources page, which looks like this:
You can either select a subject area to view all databases with materials relevant to that area, or you can select a letter to view all databases that begin with that letter. Since you are reading this guide, you likely don't know what databases Bedsole Library subscribes to, and/or you are interested solely in doing research on a particular topic. Therefore, selecting a subject would be best. Click the gray dropdown arrow adjacent to the box reading "Select a Subject." Choose a subject from the available options.
Step 2: Choose a Database
You will be directed to a list of databases relevant to the subject you chose along with a description of each:
Seeing the long list of unfamiliar databases and not knowing exactly where you should go can be a bit daunting. Perhaps you've read the descriptions and still aren't sure where to begin. Don't worry: there isn't really a wrong choice. In fact, many of the databases have some overlap in their subscriptions (some content is shared), so you won't necessarily be missing out on everything in database X if you choose to search in database Y. That said, some content is exclusive to certain databases, and there are some instances in which some databases are better than others. For education, ERIC is the best place to start, for nursing CINAHL Plus, for religion, ATLA. You can always ask a librarian for assistance selecting a database.
For our purposes here, select Academic Search Premier, a quality database that covers many different subject areas and is provided through EBSCO.
Step 3: Search the Database
You will be directed to the EBSCO Search interface:
As you can see, there are numerous options to select and un-select. The Full Text limiter, a filter that limits your search results to full articles rather than just citations, is already checked. For the time being, instead of fiddling with available options, let's just perform a simple search. Type your search term into the search bar at the top of the screen and click the maroon "Search" button.
You will be directed to the search results screen that should look something like this:
Step 4: Drilling Down with Faceted Searching
Once again, there are a lot of options here. There are also a lot of search results! Who wants to wade through three thousand returns? Fortunately, there are several things you can easily do to narrow the scope of your search results. You could do a different, more specific search; however, it is useful to learn how to filter your results via "faceted searching." Faceted searching is simply the term librarians use to denote the process of placing one or more filters or limits on a search in order to increase the precision of the search results.
First, you can filter out results according to date. Many fields, specifically the hard sciences, require research to be current and do not consider anything older than five years to be acceptable for use in assignments. So, look for the range of publication dates near the top of the left hand sidebar. By clicking on either the sliding bar or one of the boxes, you will summon a box that will allow you to choose the dates If you limit the results to only those published within the last five years, then the number of results drastically reduces.
Next, you will want to limit the results according to publication type and filter out items that are not academic journals. On the left hand side bar, you will see a "Source Types" link. Click the arrow to drop down the initial options if they are not already displayed. Check the box next to the "academic journals" tag and click the maroon "Update" button. Now, things like book reviews and newspaper articles will be filtered out of your search results.
Another faceting search technique is to filter the results by subject. Our initial search gave us articles in various fields, but we want to limit our results in this area. Each article in this particular database is indexed (classified or "tagged") twice, according to two different sets of metadata. By clicking on the "Subject" and "Subject: Thesaurus Terms" links on the left hand side bar, you drop down a menu with some options including a "Show More" link. Clicking "Show More" summons a box containing various terms and empty check boxes:
Each of these terms represents a tag applied as a classifier to various articles in the database. Check any boxes that are relevant to your research. Click the maroon "Update" button.
There are other ways to employ the faceted searching technique, but these few steps should be sufficient to get you started. Feel free to experiment or ask a librarian for assistance.
Step 5: Select an Article
Once you have narrowed your results, it is time to select one or more articles to either save or print. Once you have found a promising-sounding article, click on the title to be directed to the full bibliographic record:
From here, you can read the abstract in order to gain an idea of the author's objective(s) for the article. On the right hand side bar, there are buttons enabling you to email a link to this article to yourself, to print the bibliographic record, and even to get proper citation information in a variety of formats. In the main section of the page, you will notice several text links in all caps, adjacent to the heading, "Subject Terms." These are descriptors that this article was tagged with, and by clicking on one you can view all articles in this database that were also tagged with that descriptor.
To acquire the article itself, simply click on the PDF Full Text link in the left hand sidebar. You can print or save from your PDF viewer software.
251.442.2246 | umlibrary@umobile.edu | @umobilelib(C) 2012 The University of Mobile and the J.L. Bedsole Library
Originally created by Charles W. Hodgin III