What¡¯s a bibliographic database?
A bibliographic database usually refers to an online database which provides reference citations or full-text articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, conference reports, government documents, book chapters, thesis and dissertations and all kinds of different formats resources. Each bibliographic citation item typically contains author, title, source, abstract, and related information to identify a specific literature. The database offers search facilities to help user to locate the needed information. When you search a database, you are searching across hundreds of different publications.
Database vs. Search Engine
Both database and search engine are information searching tools. People can retrieve information from them. However, database and search engine differ in retrieved information sources, business models, and search methods.
Database usually indexes articles and documents from published materials. They usually focus on academic purposes. A database normally concentrates on one or few specific disciplines. Comparing search engine, database contents are geared towards more scholarly and in-depth, rather than general and broad. Most of databases are proprietary. Subscription is needed to access the databases.
Database usually offers comprehensive search facilities. For example, the search fields include title, subject, keywords and other biographical fields.
By contrast, search engine mainly indexes the websites. It does not charge searching fee. Instead, it generates revenue by commercial promotion on the site. Searching by keywords is main retrieval point for search engines. Searching engine collects almost all websites available on the Internet by using programs (often referred to as ¡°robots¡±). The search results may contain well-presented and credible information. Also, they may be unauthorized and misinformation. You need to assess the authenticity of information on the Internet.
Database and search engine have different functions. To choose database or search engine depends on your information needs. For conducting a review of literature for your research papers, you need to use database. For finding a location or business contact information, search engine is your first starting point. Sometimes, you need to search both for the specific information need.
The Fundamentals of Database
The primary form of scholar communication is through the academic journals. It¡¯s very hard to browse all print copies of journals to find the related information. A database usually collects hundreds of journal publications. You can locate a specific article via searching the databases.
A bibliographic record usually contains title, author, source, subject, abstract or full-text access points, which help you to identify/retrieve a specific article. These access points group all similar materials together. For example, you can search the database for an author and the database will display a list of articles written by that author. The functions of the database are to gather the documents, arrange them into different groups and provide an interface for information retrieval.
Various databases have different search interfaces. The main components include basic search, advanced search, thesaurus, browse by publications, limits and help.
Access the Databases at UIC
1. Click Databases on the Information Centre homepage.
2. Click Ebsco on the Databases page
Search a Database
Formulate a search strategy is the first step to conduct an information search. Analyse your topic and identify possible resources to locate information. Conduct the search and broaden/limit the search results. Finally, evaluation and management the search results.
Take EBSCO as an example to demonstrate how to search a database.
2. Choose a database or multiple databases.
3. Understand the search interface.
4. Analyse your topic and identify the keywords
E.g The debate about whether euthanasia should be legal.
.
5. Type in the keywords in the search boxes and try full-text search firstly shown as the above chart. Browse the search results and see whether you need to broaden or narrow the results. There are some techniques to broaden/limit the search results.
Choose subject heading to narrow the search results. Subject headings are terms databases use to describe the item and classify resources into similar subject groups.
Add synonyms and truncation to broaden your search results. Truncation is a symbol that places at the end or in the middle of a word to present all variant endings or spellings of the word. Truncation helps to catch more search results on the word. Different databases have different truncation symbols. The common truncation symbols are * and ?.
Euthanasia | Debate | Legal
(Risk to die) OR (Assisted suicide) | Dispute OR Controversy | Lawful OR Sanction
Euthanas* |Discus* | Leg*
6. Evaluation the search results
Check the search results from the following aspects:
Whether is the article peer reviewed?
When is the article published?
Who are the author and publisher?
7. Managing your results
Few output options are available in many databases. For example, save/print HTML/PDF full-text; export the search results to Endnotes (reference management software); email the results to your email and save the results to the folder that you can view later.
