The nitty gritty on finding things in an electronic format
You've been told that the computer is a vast treasure trove of information at your fingertips. But when you try to get into that stash, you're often left with a great deal of information that is mostly useless.
This unit cracks open the information vault to give you a look inside the database, which is the structure that contains the information you're looking for.
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A database is a collection of information organized to provide efficient retrieval. The collected information could be in any number of formats (electronic, printed, graphic, audio, statistical, combinations). There are physical (paper/print) and electronic databases.
A database could be as simple as an alphabetical arrangement of names in an address book or as complex as a database that provides information in a combination of formats.
Text, graphics and audio information grouped by what they have in common
Databases provide various formats of information. Different databases provide different kinds of information. In this unit we are focusing on the kinds of databases you use for doing research.
Bibliographic databases provide a descriptive record of an item, but the item itself is not provided in the database. Information about the item is provided, including such things as author, title, subject, publisher, etc. The information provided is called a citation. Sometimes a short summary or abstract of the item is provided as well. Examples of bibliographic databases include the GALILEO database Social Sciences Abstracts, or the Internet Movie Database on the World Wide Web.
A full-text database provides the full-text of a publication. For instance, Research Library in GALILEO provides not only the citation to a journal article, but often the entire text of the article as well. "CollegeSource Online" offers full-text of 20,000 college catalogs, so rather than having to request a catalog from several colleges to make comparisons, you can gather information from all colleges you're interested in at one time.
Some databases provide numeric information, such as statistics or demographic information. Examples of these are (link will open in a pop-up window) Census Bureau databases and databases containing stock market information.
You can also find databases that collect only image information (EBSCOhost image collection), audio information (MP3 or wav files), or a combination of any of the above types (CNN).
CNN's site has a search option that provides access to news articles and the original video and audio files that accompanied them. Try the link below for a look at the combination of information types in CNN's database.
Meta-databases are databases that allow one to search for content that is indexed by other databases. jake and GOLD are examples of this kind of database. If you find a citation for an article in one of the bibliographic databases and want to determine if the article is available in full-text in another database, you could do a search for the journal in jake to get a list of all the databases that index that specific publication and whether those databases include it in full-text.
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The following are external links and will open in a pop-up window.
Information in Databases: Subjects and Publication Types
How databases categorize information
Each database type can be further divided by subject and publication types.
Subject area: The information in a database can be specific to a particular academic discipline or subject, such as Business, Medicine, Agriculture, etc.
Examples:
GALILEO > Business and Economics > ABI/INFORM Complete
GALILEO > Medicine and Health Sciences > MEDLINE
GALILEO > Science & Technology > AGRICOLA
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> Unit 2 > Starting Your Seach
and
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Publication type: Some databases might cover only information collected from periodicals (magazines, newspapers, journals) while others cover only books. Popular and current events publications might be the focus of some databases and others might cover information only from scholarly journals.
Scholarly journals:
Current Contents (GALILEO>Science & Technology> Current Contents), PsycFIRST (GALILEO>Social Sciences> PsycFIRST)
Popular culture and current events:
Reader's Guide Abstracts (GALILEO>News/Facts Reference> Reader's Guide Abstracts)
Combination of scholarly and popular publications:
Academic Search Premier (GALILEO>Academic Search Premier)
Language:
Some databases cover only English language materials while other databases include citations to materials in a variety of languages.
Time Period:
Generally, databases cover only a certain range of dates. The MLA (Modern Language Association) database covers a period from 1963 to the present, while Academic Search Premier offers citations to information published from 1984 to the present, but offers full-text only from 1990 to the present.
Availability of materials indexed in database:
One library isn't likely to carry all the publications indexed in a database. Both size and mission determine the type materials an institution has and the depth of coverage subjects are given. Smaller two-year college libraries aren't likely to carry as many discipline specific publications as a four-year graduate research institution. Also consider, an institution that has a nursing (or other) program will 1) have materials that support the program, and 2) provide coverage of the program based on the type degrees offered, i.e., an institution offering a masters degree in nursing will have more materials on the subject that an institution offering only a bachelors degree in nursing.
There are generally three options for obtaining needed materials: your library; another University System Library; or a library outside the state. Search the GIL online catalog to determine the materials your library has. Search the GIL Universal Catalog, linked from library home pages, to find materials owned by other University System of Georgia libraries. If materials are not available within the state, they can be obtained through interlibrary loan, but if time is a concern, you might want to search a database that would be more likely to offer information that can be found in your home library or at another University System library.
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An online library catalog is an electronic bibliographic database that describes the books, videotapes, periodicals, etc. carried by a particular library.
The online library catalog evolved from a printed source, the library card catalog. Before the advent of online catalogs, library catalogs were pieces of furniture that contained numerous small drawers. In these drawers were contained the records of particular items in the library.
These records were printed on small 3"X5" cards and each element of that record had an individual card produced for it. So for each item in the library there was:
a card for the author
a card for the title
and cards for each individual subject heading
A copy of John Grisham's The Firm might have four different cards filed in the different catalog areas: one for the author's name, one for the title, and one for each subject heading, like those below.
You could only search one element at a time and this could take quite a bit of time from your schedule. Very few libraries in Georgia have card catalogs anymore, but you might see the chest of small drawers hidden in a dark corner in some libraries.
Understanding how databases are organized can help you retrieve information more efficiently. Information about each item in a database is called a record.
Elements of an individual record are called fields. Fields can be used as points of access when searching a database. A record in a periodical database would include information about a periodical article (author, source, date, title, etc.).
You might try visualizing a record in an electronic database as being part of a table. Each column in the table represents the fields and each row represents the individual record. The table below represents what an electronic database of students in a class might look like:
If you wanted a list of all students who were freshmen you could target the Class field, type in "freshman" as your search, and you would get a list that would include John Smith, Evelyn Turner, Jason Zwemke, Yu Guoquing, Pricilla Vasser, and Mandy Wright.
To determine which students have April birthdays you could target the Birth Month field and type in April as your search and your list would include Evelyn Turner and Yu Guoquing.
You can also target two different fields at one time. If you wanted a list of Sophomores born in September you would target both the Class field and the Birth Month field. The list of the students in this category would include Penny Lane and Carrie Pfahl, but not Mandy Wright, even though she was born in September.
The organization of a database is very basic, regardless of who produces it.
Despite great advances in computer technology, computers still depend on human input. Computers can think faster, but they can't think with as much complexity as humans.
In order to get electronic databases to divulge their secrets, you have to know how to speak to them. Think of it as digital baby talk.
You have to tell a computer if you want all the words of your search to appear in the results. You might also need to let the computer know which terms you don't want to appear in your results.
The following sections go into detail on how to speak to a database to get the best results for your information needs.
Summary Search Types
Basic search types
Search operators
Keyword
Natural language
Subject Heading
Browsing thesaurus or index
Controlling how the computer interprets your search
There are some standard ways of retrieving information from any electronic database, be it an online library catalog (GIL), a periodical database (GALILEO), or an Internet database.
Keywords are the words that describe your topic of research. These can be individual words or a phrase. These keywords can be chosen from the sentence you create to define your research topic. Once you choose the significant words, you can then come up with synonyms, or words with similar meanings. All of these can be keywords to use in forming your search.
Generally, when you submit a keyword search to a library catalog or periodical database, the title, subject, and abstract fields are the only parts of the record searched. These fields are called the Basic Index.
Keyword searching is available in almost all databases. Many databases require you to explicitly describe the relationship between keywords using special connectors to associate your keywords in various relationships.
Example:
You've chosen the topic "alternative fuels" for a research paper. To help you focus this rather broad topic, you put it into the form of a question or sentence:
What are the types of alternative fuels being used or developed for automobiles?
Usually, the nouns and adjectives in your sentence or question will give you a good idea of what your keywords will be. In this case, the phrase "alternative fuels" and "automobiles" are the significant keywords.
From these keywords make a list of synonyms to use as alternatives. Since different writers will describe the same thing using different words, it's good to arm yourself with a variety of keywords so you don't miss important information.
alternative fuels
automobiles
electricity
ethanol
natural gas
hydrogen fuel cells
cars
vehicles
transportation
motor vehicle
You probably would need to do some background reading before coming up with some of the terms you see above.
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> Unit 2 > Starting Your Search
This is an algebraic concept, but don't let that scare you away. Boolean connectors are all about sets. There are three little words that are used as Boolean connectors:
and
or
not
Think of each keyword as having a "set" of results that are connected with it. These sets can be combined to produce a different "set" of results. You can also exclude certain "sets" from your results by using a Boolean connector.
AND is a connector that requires both words to be present in each record in the results. Use AND to narrow your search.
Search Term
Hits
Television
999 hits
Violence
876 hits
Television and violence
123 hits
The words 'television' and 'violence' will both be present in each record.
OR is a connector that allows either word to be present in each record in the results. Use OR to expand your search.
Search Term
Hits
Adolescents
97 hits
Teenagers
75 hits
Adolescents or teenagers
172 hits
Either 'adolescents' or 'teenagers' (or both) will be present in each record.
NOT is a connector that requires the first word be present in each record in the results, but only if the record does not contain the second word.
Search Term
Hits
High school
423 hits
Elementary
652 hits
High school not Elementary
275 hits
Each record contains the words 'high school', but not the word 'elementary'.
Please note, your computer will require the Flash 5 plug-in for the
interactive example below to work. If you don't have the Flash
plug-in you can download it for free from (link will open in a pop-up window): Macromedia.
This type of search is the easiest to understand, but many databases don't offer it as a function.
A natural language search is a search using regular spoken language, such as English. Using this type of search you can ask the database a question or you can type in a sentence that describes the information you are looking for. The database then uses a programmed logic to determine the keywords in the sentence by their position in the sentence.
The Internet search service Ask Jeeves offers natural language searching.
The following external link will open in a pop-up window.
(noun) The quality or state of being proximate: Closeness.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Proximity operators allow you to locate one word within a certain distance of another. The symbols generally used in this type of search are w and n.
The w represents the word "with(in)" and the n represents the word "near." This type of search is not available in all databases.
Near Operator (Nx) — finds words within x number of words from each other, regardless of the order in which they occur.
Example: television n2 violence would find "television violence" or "violence on television," but not "television may be the culprit in recent high school violence."
Within Operator (Wx) — finds words within x number of words from each other, in the order they are entered in the search.
Example: Franklin w2 Roosevelt would find Franklin Roosevelt or Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Franklin D. Roosevelt, but would not find Roosevelt Franklin.
Phrase search — enclosing a phrase in quotation marks will help ensure that the database searches for those words as a group. The database then searches for those word together in the specific order you provided.
Check the database help screens to see if proximity searching is available and if so, what format to use when entering a proximity search.
Some databases allow certain symbols to be used for searching different forms of a word (such as plurals) or different spellings. Check the help screens of a particular database to determine the appropriate symbols to use.
Plurals — a symbol added to the end of a word to instruct the database to search for plural as well as singular forms of words. The symbol used in many databases is a plus (+).
Example: drug+ retrieves drug or drugs
Truncation — a symbol added to the end of the root of a word to instruct the database to search for all forms of a word. The asterisk (*) is used in many databases for truncation.
Example: adolescen* retrieves adolescent, adolescents, or adolescence
Wildcards — a symbol used to represent any character. Wildcards can usually be used at the end of a word or within a word. The pound symbol (#) is used in many databases as a wildcard. You can use this symbol to search variant spellings of a word. You can use more than one pound sign to stand in for more than one character. Each pound sign represents 0-1 characters.
Example:
wom#n retrieves woman or women
teen##### would retrieve teens and teenager and teenagers
As you look through the results of an initial search you will see that the article citations have subject headings or descriptors. Articles that have similar content will have the same subject headings even if the authors of the articles used different terms to describe the topic.
For example, one author may use the phrase "capital punishment" and another "death penalty." The subject heading on both records will be the same.
This is called a controlled vocabulary. By searching using that subject heading you will retrieve records where either term is used. Sometimes these subject headings are hyperlinked and you can link to other articles with similar content. Other databases do not offer this function and so you would have to do a new search using the terms you have discovered.
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Some databases let you search the subject headings directly. A list of subject headings used in a particular database is often referred to as a thesaurus. They are available through the index or subject search tools like these examples.
When you click on one of these buttons you will be taken to a screen with an input box and a "Search" button.
The index displays an alphabetical list of subject headings used in the database.
Some databases have sophisticated thesauri that provide cross-references. These are usually accessible through a Thesaurus or Subjects button. If you type in "death penalty," the thesaurus might have an entry that tells you to use "capital punishment" instead. Some thesauri also include a description of the term, and a list of broader, narrower, and related terms.
The results you get from your search depend on the type of database you are searching.
A bibliographic database provides a citation which is a basic description of an article. This usually includes the title of the work, the author, the publisher, the date, the original source, the city of publication, etc., according to the type of item being cited (e.g. book, magazine article, World Wide Web site, etc.)
A bibliographic database may also provide an abstract — a short summary of the contents of an item in a database.
A full-text database will display an article in its entirety. All the words that appeared in the original print format are offered to you online. Non-textual material such as pictures and charts are not included.
A full-image database offers scanned images of an article so that what you see is exactly what you would see if you were looking at a printed copy of the journal.
Each of the following links will open a pop-up window with an example of the different citation types:
Making your search more specific based on your results
After completing your initial search, read through any full-text documents and note any aspects of your topic that you might not have considered. Also make note of the subject headings or descriptors attached to your results. You might be able to use these for further searches.
If you get too many results from your search, try limiting it in some way. You can restrict a search to a certain range of dates or try a different type of search (Boolean, natural language, proximity operators).
WANT MORE on refining your search topic?
> Unit 2 > Start Your Search
These exercises have been provided to help students learn about library services and researching. They may be used by an instructor as an assignment.
Exercise: Understanding Databases
Create an electronic database from a non-electronic source
Learning Objective: Transfer information in a non-electronic source into an electronic database of your own making.
Think about what other types of databases there are besides electronic ones (phone book, rolodex, yellow pages, etc). Choose one for use in this exercise.
Investigate the database and decide what fields you would need to describe the contents. In a word processing program make a simple table using 10 records from the database you investigated. That would give you a table with 10 rows and the appropriate number of fields to properly describe the contents within.
Print out and submit your work to your instructor if required.
