Introduction to Library Databases

One of the wonderful aspects of being a student at IPFW, whether you come to campus regularly or if you a distance learning student and come to campus only seldom, is that you have full access to the Helmke library’s databases.

Understanding and using library databases is critical to your success in college, in practically any class that you take.

So What is a Database?

Many of you have never used a database before, and you may not know what one is. Simply put, a database is a search engine that searches only academic sources.

These sources, written by specialists in specific academic fields, are copyrighted, and IPFW has purchased the rights for you, with your student fees, to reprint and use for your own research and writing.

Databases are often specific to your major. For example, if you are a nursing student, there are many databases, such as Medline, tailored specifically to medical issues. If you are an education major, EbscoHost is a database you would want to use frequently. English majors would use Jstor, etc.

There are many databases specific to each major (for full index by major click here), but the major database that is useful for all majors is Ebscohost, which provides abstracts and indexing of articles in nearly 4,500 popular magazines, scholarly journals, and major newspapers, updated daily, in a wide range of fields including business, education, science and technology, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences, with nearly 3,500 titles available full text. (Full text simply means that you have access online to the entire test of the article, thus you can print it out.)

How Do You Use One?

All databases are password protected. You will need to have activated your IPFW computer account to access Helmke’s databases (a requirement of this course). For help activating your account, click here.

Once you know your login and password, you can begin this short tutorial to learn the nuts and bolts of database use.

Although you only really learn to use databases by using them, the one quick tip I can give you, is that the two major databases are Eric/Academic Search elite or Academic Search Premier, which are really all Ebscohost databases – don’t know why this always has to be so confusing. This group of databases indexes article from college and university journals, as well as from a few of the major popular magazines. When using Ebscohost you always want to look for the little box that says something like “search for full-text articles only” – click on this always, so you get articles that you can access from home. Otherwise these search engines will give you articles that you have to go find at the library in print form – no need to do that unless you are writing a 100 page paper.

The other major database is Lexis-Nexis, which gives you access to full-text articles from all the major newspapers around the country (and world). Newspapers articles are not considered as “academic” as Ebscohost articles, but they are useful to report on trends and popular opinion. Sometimes I start a research paper by going to Lexis-Nexis first, to see what the “buzz” might be about a topic, then I go to Ebscohost to get an academic discussion of the topic.

Helmke has provided several “guides” which give you detailed instructions on how to use these databases. Go to http://www.lib.ipfw.edu/guides/guides_at_a_glance/

for the index of guides – you’ll find Eric (Ebscohost) and Academic Search Premier (which are really the same), Lexis-Nexis, as well as IUCAT (which is the card catalog for all IU libraries).

For a discussion of some of the other very helpful databases (particularly for W233 students) you can access with your IPFW computer account, click here.

Why use a database?

The best reason is that nearly all of your profs will require it. You simply can not write an academic paper in any discipline without a thorough understanding of using databases. The second reason is that they are trustworthy. Look at it this way, any idiot, including me, can put up their own web page (there are actually web sites that promote anorexia, that “prove” the Holocaust never existed, that promote membership in the Ku Klux Klan, etc.) To the contrary, databases are tightly controlled by academic organizations which have a peer review editing process that screens all articles before they make it into the database.

That’s not to say that Google and other search engines that cruise the World Wide Web aren’t useful. They are. There are many authors, academics, and organizations that have their own websites. Many of these can be very useful, particularly those that end in .edu. .gov. or .org (stay away from .com sites – they are generally trying to sell you something). However, any time you write an academic paper, your prof (including me) will expect that the majority of your sources come from databases.

How do you cite databases?

Ah, good question, and no one seems to have a simple answer. The easiest way is to pray that your source is available as a .pdf file. If this is the case, it will come with page numbers (which makes your life vastly simpler) and you can cite it just like a print journal (forget that you got it over the internet).

If that doesn’t’ work click here.

Worth Weller

Page created: 5.21.03

Page modified: 7.15.03