Searching Electronic Databases

1
Searching Electronic Databases

• Peggy White
• September 2002

2
(No Transcript)
3
(No Transcript)
4
Sample Databases

• ABI Inform Global (Business and Management)
• Academic Search Premier
• 2600 Scholarly journals covering many areas
• Canadian Periodical Index
• CBCA-Canadian Business and Current Affairs
• ERIC - Education
• Expanded Academic ASAP
• 1500 General interest and scholarly journals
• Sociological Abstracts
• www.google.com

5
Where searching occurs

• Subject or descriptive parts of a record
• Citation
• Abstract
• Descriptors or words from a thesaurus or subject
  heading list
• Full text

6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
Search Features

• Keyword
• Keyword in a specific field
• Thesaurus or Subject Heading List
• Truncation
• Combining Terms or Sets
• Relevancy

9
Keyword Searching

• Uses your own terms
• Gets you started
• Good for new fields where terminology is not
  developed
• Good for searching for very specific items such
  as a specific drug or computer chip

10
Search FeaturesField searching

• System searches in a specific part of the record
• Choices often include
• Author
• Title
• Subject

11
Search FeaturesThesaurus or Subject Headings

• Indexer applied terms
• Chosen from a predetermined list of official
  terms
• Improves relevancy and focus
• Found in the DESCRIPTOR FIELDS of records.

12
Search FeaturesTruncation and Autostemming

• Used to capture root word variations
• ? Common symbols
• Truncation example
• Pollut would retrieve
• pollute, pollutes, polluted, pollutant,
  pollutants, pollution

13
Search Features Combining Terms AND OR
Both terms must be present.
Either term may be present
Retrieval will be smaller
Retrieval will be bigger
14
Using AND and OR
Soft toys (Concept 1 ) AND (Operator) Design
OR Manufacture (Concept 2)
OR (Operator)
(Soft toys) AND (Design OR Manufacture)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Search FeaturesCombining Sets
Set three
Set two
Set one
18
Combining Sets
19
Improving results

• Use precise words
• Search in a specific field ie Title
• Combine two or more words
• career and engineer
• Combine sets
• Use the thesaurus
• Sort by relevancy