I. Introduction
Library databases provide citations to, and frequently the actual full-text of, articles, book chapters, and other materials. Although some of the UMUC Library databases include a mix of popular and scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed, there are many subject-specific databases that include only the scholarly literature of that particular discipline or subject area.
If you are relatively new to UMUC you may have used a database by the same name at another institution. However, the same subject databases may be produced by different vendors, which can alter the specific content as each database vendor has its own inclusion criteria, such as subject scope, journal quality, customer requests, journal availability, budget, etc. The Library also has to make vendor choices based on ease of use, budget, accessibility, subject scope, coverage dates, etc.
II. Choosing a DatabaseUMUC subscribes to more than 140 different databases on a variety of subjects. If you know the name of the database you can access it from the alphabetical listing available via the Articles and More: Library Databases (Figure 1.) of the UMUC Library and Information Services home page. If you are uncertain of which database to choose, you may want to consult the Guide to Physical and Life Sciences Resources, which also provides an annotated listing of relevant library databases and web sites geared to these subject areas. This guide is available from the UMUC Library and Information Services home page under the Find Articles, Books, More..: Search by Subject(Figure 2.). Click the image below to move to the page.
| Figure 1. | Figure 2. |
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Critical thinking is an important aspect of information literacy. Critical
thinking encompasses such activities as analyzing a case study, designing and
testing a hypothesis, interpreting statistical data, and deciding which approach
to use in a software program.
Critical thinking is also necessary in
using library databases. With the plethora of database choices available, the
critical user must make decisions based on subject content, scope, material
type, scholarship of the included resources, and date coverage. Each UMUC
database, available from the A
to Z database listing or included in the various
subject guides, provides an annotation describing the subject and date
coverage as well as any relevant technical issues. Each database annotation also
has a "more" link, which leads to additional information.
In addition, critical thinking is required in conducting the actual literature search. Determining search vocabulary, creating a search strategy, evaluating search results for relevancy and scholarship, locating the identified resources, and refining the search all require critical thinking skills. For additional assistance in helping your students to be able to locate scholarly publications, see Identify and Locate Scholarly Journals, a resource created by the UMUC Information and Library Services.
For example, the database General Science Abstracts includes the subjects of anthropology, astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, computer science, earth science, environmental issues, mathematics, medicine and health, physics, and zoology. The content features citations and abstracts of American and British journals and magazines, including articles, biographical sketches, symposia, conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor, special and supplementary journal issues, laboratory guides, and book reviews. The date coverage is 1984 to the present. Although full-text is not directly available, the subject coverage is strong in the sciences, and Find It, which will be discussed in more detail later, provides linkage to available full-text via other UMUC databases or DocumentExpress, UMUc's document delivery service.
Compare this with the database Academic Search Premier. The subjects covered in this database include biological sciences, physics, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and women's studies. The content has citations, abstracts and full text articles from a large number of journals. The date coverage is 1965 – present.
Although Academic Search Premier (ASP) does include some science resources, has earlier coverage, and contains full-text articles, the sciences are not its main focus and therefore it may not contain as much useful science-specific information as General Science Abstracts. However, ASP is useful to locate quick results on a broad array of topics. This strength can be especially useful for the student who may not have a clear focus on his/her topic as the quick results may trigger an idea for a topic not considered before. Then, the more specific topic can be explored in General Science Abstracts or another science-related database that is more relevant to that particular topic. If the full-text is not available it can be requested using DocumentExpress. However, you will need to plan for enough time in your assignment schedule to allow students to identify and obtain articles.
IV. Review of SearchingFor students, understanding how to search (section IV) and read a citation (section V) are some of the most difficult hurdles to overcome in the research process. These sections are included as a "refresher" and are available for you to use i n your courses.
1. Finding and Combining Search Terms
| OR | fruit fliesOR drosophila melanogaster |
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Determining the correct search terminology is “half the battle.” To begin this process list possible search terms and include possible synonyms, using OR between each word. For example, if you are searching for information regarding fruit flies try using both the popular and scientific names combining them with OR to specify either this word OR that word. | |
| AND | fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster AND genetics |
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If you want more than one term to be included in your search use AND between the terms as it tells the search system that all of the terms must appear somewhere in each of the retrieved results. It is used to narrow a search. If you want to locate research on fruit flies and genetics your search statement would look like this. | |
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created by David Clarke. Adapted from UCSP 611 course. |
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| NOT | fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster AND larvae NOT adults |
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If you want to exclude a term from your search use NOT as it tells the system not to include this term(s) as part of the search. It is used to narrow a search. If you want to locate research on fruit flies in the larvae stage, but not adults, your search will look like this. | |
| ( ) | (fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster) AND genetics |
| Each database has its own search mechanisms. For example, some databases may require that you use parentheses to group terms, especially when using OR. When parentheses are used, those terms inside the parentheses are searched first. If more than one set of parentheses are included, usually the one on the left is searched first. For some databases, such as General Science Abstracts, there are no differences in the search results between using parentheses and not using them. |
2. Keyword and Subject Searching
If you are unsure of the correct vocabulary for a particular database, try conducting a keyword search, sometimes also referred to as default. A keyword search looks for the term anywhere in the record, which means the word could be included in the title, abstract, full-text or be the subject term. Although this type of search usually brings back too many records, many of which may prove to be totally unrelated, it may be the only option when a concept is so new that standardized vocabulary has not yet been developed. Think of this approach as the “fishing expedition.”
You are looking for the correct vocabulary, usually referred to as a subject or descriptor. Once you locate the subject term the database is using you can use that term to narrow your search to find the resources that are focused on that specific subject. A subject/descriptor search looks only for results with the specified terms in the subject/descriptor field.
For example, if we were to conduct a keyword search in the database General Science Abstracts using (fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster ) AND genetics, we get back 1522 results that include these terms somewhere in the citation (Click next arrow to move to next picture).
However, after skimming the top few possibilities you discover that an article that looks like a possibility used the descriptor [subject term] drosophila—genetic research. You can click on the link to that term and now have narrowed your search to 322 results, which are more focused on this topic.
Now that you have a more focused search term, the descriptor, you can use the Advanced Search function in order to use the pull-down menu to select descriptor. If you want to combine this term with other terms in the search box, think of the hyphen as AND so that your subject search will now be drosophila AND genetic research. AND [whatever other terms you want to include].
Not only do you use critical thinking skills to evaluate the possible merit of the article (e.g., authorship, relevancy to the topic, depth of scholarship, currency), but also to determine whether the vocabulary used for that article may prove useful to find other related materials.
3. Thesauri
Some databases also include an online thesaurus, which provides a way of entering a possible search term to determine what term(s) the database uses for your suggested term. This is especially useful as a way of including related terms that you may not have considered.
4. Truncation
| * | gene* : gene, genes, genetic, genetics, etc. |
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| Another useful trick is to truncate the search term. Although truncation is a useful tool, especially if you want to retrieve results with all possible word endings, it can also add unrelated items to your results. For example, if instead of genetics you entered the term gene*, you will also retrieve such words as gene, genes, genetic, genetics, etc. Unfortunately, it may also include unrelated terms such as general, generalities, generation, etc. Some databases may not allow truncated words if the possible results are too large. In the case of the example, the more targeted way to truncate this term will be to add more of the root such as genet* . Unrelated terms will now be excluded but so will the terms gene or genes. This is a trial and error process and like many things, there are positives and negatives. |
The information-literate student can gain valuable knowledge about an article by examining its citation within a database. Looking at a citation, a student can begin to judge the article's usefulness for his or her research and evaluate the article's currency, credibility, etc.
Not every database presents citations in the same way, but the skills of reading a citation in one database are easily transferable to other databases and to other parts of the research process. For example, some databases do not give the author's institutional affiliation as part of a citation. But a student who knows that the author's affiliation is a key to evaluating the article's credibility will remember to look for the affiliation in the full-text of the article, since it was not available in the citation itself.
1. A Brief Citation
A student can learn a lot about an article simply from the brief citation that appears in the results list of a database search (Click next arrow to move to next picture).
2. A Detailed Record
By clicking on the article title in the brief citation, a detailed record appears that contains further useful information:
3. Caveat
The PURL or Persistant URL does not work in all databases as the ezproxy prefix, which is necessary for the Persistant URL to work, does not automatically appear in all databases. If it does not appear you will need to precede the URL with the following: http://ezproxy.umuc.edu/login?url=
4. Other Tips
Many databases allow you to establish your own user account so that you can save searches, and in some cases, depending on the database, your search results. Some databases also have an alert feature, which automatically emails you when new material has been added to the database based on your search criteria. Check the database HELP information to determine the availability of these features.
VI. Locating Full-Text1. Full-text availability
Although more and more vendors are making full-text available electronically, not all potentially-valuable research materials may be available in this format. Some major vendors, such as Elsevier, one of the major publishers of scientific journals, will not allow full-text access to volumes/issues of certain journals for the most current six months or year. This is known as embargoing. Limiting your research to only those materials available in full-text may cause you to miss a critical piece of research. If you have identified possible articles of interest and there is no full-text available from that database, the next step is to determine if the full-text is available from another UMUC source. There are different ways to do this.
2. 
(Find It)
The first way to locate the full-text is to click on the icon included with each result. This will then open a
new window specifying the location of the full-text and the links to access it.
If the full-text is not available, you are provided with a link to request the
material via Document Express. After logging onto Document Express with your
last name and 14 digit barcode, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that
the Document Express form has been automatically filled out for you and all you
will then need to do is click on submit request.
3. Journal Finder
You can also enter the journal title using Journal Finder, located on the UMUC Library and Information Services home page from the Articles and More section: E-journals by Title (Figure 3.). From here you will be directed to either the full-text or Document Express. However, in this case the request form for Document Express will not be filled out and you will have to manually enter the necessary information.
4. Document Express
Through Document Express (Figure 4.), the UMUC document delivery service, you can obtain research materials not available at UMUC. Journal article requests made through Document Express will be delivered to your desktop in full-text format usually within a week. See the Document Express tutorial for more information on how to obtain materials not available at or from UMUC.
| Figure 3. | Figure 4. |
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Books are still an important source of research. As a UMUC faculty member you have access to the book holdings for all University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) libraries. Use the library catalog, CatalogUSMAI (Figure 5.), to locate individual book titles or to search for books on a particular subject. The Find Print Books, Media and More: Using the Library Catalog guide will provide assistance in using CatalogUSMAI.
WorldCat, a catalog of library holdings throughout the world, is an excellent resource to search for books on a particular subject. WorldCat is accessible from the Articles and More: Library Databases section of the UMUC Library and Information Services home page (Figure 6.). Titles that are available at UMUC will have that designation. Books located via WorldCat and not available at UMUC or through USMAI may be requested using Document Express.
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UMUC subscribes to Refworks, a
citation management software. This product allows you to import references from
the various databases as well as manually entering the information yourself in
order to create your own database of references. In addition, you can export
specific citations into your documents and create stand-alone bibliographies,
with your references automatically formatted using one of the hundreds of
citation style formats available. See the Refworks help for
more information.
To assist your students in using correct citation methods see the UMUC Information and Library Services Citation Resources guide, which provides citation examples and links to other citation helps.
SummaryHere is a recap of what has been covered in this module and how it relates to
information literacy.
| Subject coverage | history, psychology, environmental science, etc. |
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| Scope | scholarly, peer-reviewed, original research, full-text, citation, abstracts, etc. |
| Material type | articles, newsletters, books, book chapters, Web sites, multimedia, etc. |
| Date coverage | current, historical, etc. |
| AND | all of the terms must appear somewhere in each of the retrieved record(s). It is used to narrow a search. example: drosophila melanogaster AND genetics |
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| OR | either one or both terms must appear somewhere in each of the retrieved record(s). It is used to broaden a search. example: fruit flies OR drosophila melanogaster |
| Parentheses | provides a way to combine and order the search. Terms included in the
parentheses are often searched first and then combined with the rest of
the search statement. example: |
| Truncation | search for variants of a word or singulars and plurals. example: gene* |
| Keyword | terms may be found in any area of the citation, such as title, author, abstract, full-text (if applicable), or subject. This method of searching may result in too many results or bring back results that are not relevant to the search. |
| Subject/Descriptor | terms are the specialized vocabulary developed for the particular index/database and convey the main focus of the particular item. Often an online or print thesaurus is available. Searching for subject terms is done in the subject field. Subject searching provides a smaller and more relevant results pool. |
| Catalog (USMAI) | locate books available within USMAI libraries |
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| WorldCat | locate books not available from USMAI libraries |
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automatic linker between journal citation and full-text article |
| Journal Finder | search box available on Library homepage to determine availability of journal title |
| DocumentExpress | service provided to obtain materials not available at UMUC (articles) or USMAI libraries (books) |
| Refworks | citation management software |
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| UMUC Library |
guide, created by UMUC Information and Library Services, to citation examples and sources of help |
This assignment continues to lead up to the final deliverable of either designing a totally new assignment or revising an existing one in order to incorporate information literacy objectives. It is useful to test an assignment before giving it to your students in order to ascertain any problems that may be encountered along the way.
From the list of Library Databases in the Guide to Physical and Life Sciences Resources, choose a database (excluding Academic Search Premier) and perform a search that your students would typically do while researching a paper topic. After completing this exercise, please go to Conferences, Days 3-4: Library Resources to post a summary of your experience.
Points to include are: