Resources for Information Skills

Section contents page Introduction Database searching What is an electronic database? Search strategies Planning your search Planning your search: key steps Boolean logic Advanced search techniques Reviewing your results Summary
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What is an electronic database?

An electronic database is searchable electronic collection of resources such as books, journal articles, conference papers, theses and academic documents. In other words it is a collection of data arranged systematically to provide easy retrieval and search.

This information can retrieved through a matching process, whereby the user's query is matched against the information in database.

Why use electronic databases?

Electronic Databases are the key sources of information for academicians, researchers and students. They contain high quality scholarly information. A single database may refer and search several sources including periodicals, books, news papers and video recordings. Resources can be easily accessed regardless of time and location, provided if you are connected with the internet.

The Library has to pay for you to access these databases; however, there are a number of databases provided unfettered access under the public domain.

Some databases are bibliographic, which means that they just index each article with its own record which includes sufficient information to enable you to locate the original to read. There may also be an abstract or summary. Other databases are full text, and will include the whole text of the article for you to read on the screen or download to print. As of now the library does not any subscribed electronic journals, but open access journals such as Journal of Agricultural Science , Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), has been immensely useful.

Tips to formulate your key words

Each record in a database is made up of different fields such as author(s), title of the articlename of the journal in which the article is published, the year of publication, and keywords which have been assigned to the article. This allows you to frame your key words and search terms in the same way, either by author, journal title or by keyword or subject.

For instance

Bowen, J.(Author) (2008). (Date) "Metadata to Support Next-Generation Library Resource Discovery: Lessons from the eXtensible Catalog, Phase 1".(Article title) Information Technology and Libraries, (Journal title) 27(2) (Volume & issue) ), 6-19. (pages)

Reasons for reading journal articles for your assignments:

  • It takes much less time for a journal article to be published, either in print or electronically, than it does for a book so they are more likely to contain the latest research or information on a topic.
  • The content is generally more specialised than in books so they may provide focused discussion on your topic
  • "Peer reviewed" articles, which have been read and approved by experts in your discipline, ensuring that facts you are citing in your assignments are correct!