Searching Databases
Although every electronic database has its own unique searching features, there are some basic techniques you can use to search most effectively. Keep in mind that electronic databases may change format as vendors continually upgrade and enhance their products. Many electronic resources have an online HELP feature that you may find useful. For help with specific databases, please consult a reference librarian.
5
things to do with an article database
Database
Structure
Field
Specific Searching vs. Keyword Searching
Boolean
Searching
Truncation
and Wildcard Searching
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Search by Keyword
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Search by Subject
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Limit by date, language, etc.
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Mark the records you want to save
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Email citations/articles to yourself
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Database
Structure
A database is a collection of records. Each record describes a unique piece
of information: a journal article, a book chapter, a conference paper, etc.
These records may be in the form of a citation, an abstract, or an article.
A record is comprised of fields; common fields are author, title, and subject
headings, but most databases have other fields such as language or publication
date.
Following is a sample record from Philosopher's Index:
TITLE: Self-Defeating Symbolism
in Politics
AUTHOR: Teson,-Fernando-R
SOURCE: Journal-of-Philosophy. 2001 December; 98(12): 636-652
JOURNAL TITLE: Journal-of-Philosophy
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SERIAL NUMBER: 0022-362X
ABSTRACT: The article examines the rationality of persons who support
public policies in the name of principles that would be frustrated should
those policies be enacted. It shows that, contrary to what Robert Nozick and
others have claimed, the behavior of those agents need not be explained by
appealing to symbolic rationality. Instead, it can be explained by standard
theories of rationality. Self-defeating political agents typically value their
symbolizing, not the symbolized value. The authors distinguish several different
cases of self-defeating political agents and suggest that their behavior is
better understood by assuming their ignorance, error, or posturing than their
concern for symbolized values.
DESCRIPTORS: BEHAVIOR-; ETHICS-; POLITICS-; PUBLIC-POLICY; SYMBOLISM-
LANGUAGE: English
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal-Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2001
UPDATE CODE: 362
ACCESSION NUMBER: 3019745
In the preceding record, the most important fields are the title, author, source (which tells you where to locate the material), abstract, and descriptors (or subjects).
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Field
Specific Searching vs. Keyword Searching
Many electronic databases default to keyword (or "free text") searching.
This means that the computer searches for the terms you enter throughout all
the records in the database no matter where they appear in. Keyword searching
is effective when you don't know what official subject heading or descriptor
you should use. It may present a problem, however, because the term may only
be mentioned within an abstract or article and it may not be the main topic
of the article. For instance, if you're looking up the disease AIDS, you may
retrieve a record about deafness because hearing aids are mentioned in the
abstract.
If you encounter this problem, retrieving too many irrelevant records, you can do a field specific search. This means that you're just going to look for your terms in certain fields. If you're searching for a specific topic, you'll want to limit your search to the subject field. In many databases, the terms in this field are called descriptors rather than subject headings.
Only certain terms can be used as descriptors; for example, the official descriptor for women in PsycINFO is "human females." Articles about women in general will have this term in the descriptor field. To search for the term "human females" in the descriptor field alone you would enter "human females" and specify a subject search. In order to perform an effective search, you should try to use official subject headings; this will help you obtain the most relevant materials. Most databases have lists of subject headings, indexes, or thesauri that will help you determine the appropriate terms. Another way to determine the appropriate subject headings is to do a keyword search and look at the subject headings or descriptors that have been assigned to the most relevant records; then use those terms.
Field specific searching also allows you to search for an author and limit by date, language, journal title, etc. Keep in mind that not all databases allow this more sophisticated searching; for instance, ComIndex only allows you to search for words in the titles of articles.
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Boolean
Searching
Most databases cannot interpret or search for phrases, such as "the portrayal
of women in advertising." Boolean searching allows you to search for
your topic in a controlled way by using Boolean operators; these include AND,
OR, and NOT. In the preceding topic, you would need to determine that the
basic concepts are "women" and "advertising."
The and operator
combines two terms. It will find records that include both terms.
women and advertising
The or operator
retrieves records that have either of the terms you specify. To expand your
search results, think of synonyms for your terms.
(women or females) and advertising
The not operator
excludes terms. If you don't want articles that have to do with radio advertising,
your search would look like this:
(women or females) and advertising not radio
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Truncation
and Wildcard Searching
Truncation allows you to look for variant endings of a term, usually by using
a symbol after the root of a word. For example, advertis* will find advertising,
advertisements, advertise, etc. Unfortunately, not all databases use the same
symbol, so check the HELP feature if available, or ask a librarian for details.
Wildcards let you substitute a specified number of letters, again, by using a symbol. For example, wom#n will find women or woman.
Now your search may look
like this:
(wom#n or females) and advertis* and portrayal#
As a general rule, it is better to do a broad search initially, and then narrow it down if you find too many records. Since each database uses different searching conventions, consult a librarian for the best way to construct a search on your particular topic.
