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| Instruction > Electronic Scholarly Databases |
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Computers now sit side-by-side in academic libraries. Patrons can find citations to important articles, dissertations, reviews, and proceedings quickly on electronic scholarly databases. These have revolutionized academic research. Full-text versions for all these formats are becoming more available. This allows researchers to gain a better understanding of the progress of any field and obtain document more efficiently. Despite these advantages, scholarly databases are extremely expensive. Academic libraries are the best places to gain access to these databases. Yet, the databases are deceptive. They look easy but require skill to use effectively. This reality secures librarianship as a necessary, not endangered, career. Academic librarians provide the organization elusive in scholarly databases. Scholarly Database- Searching Tips: The various database interfaces, influence the search strategy. Users must take time to learn the features of the interface before entering a query. This requires using the thesaurus to obtain the correct subject heading, investigating the search operations, and discovering the output formats. Most databases allow searching by keyword, author, title and subject. Keyword- allows the most flexibility, but specificity leads to more relevancy. Subject- requires knowledge of the specific terms that the database uses. The selected terms often defy logic and the vocabulary lacks uniformity, even in different databases with the same search interface. Author- often authors have a specific authority heading that helps differentiate them from others of the same name. It is useful to know this heading to obtain works by the correct author. Title- using unique words and putting the title in quotes helps obtain the correct document quickly. Learning these tips will lead to efficient use of these dynamic resources!
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