Week 3: Online Libraries and Databases

Week 3
Lecture summary
In the lecture we learned what online databases are what you would use them for, the types of dtatbases, the advantages and the limitations of online databases.

Tutorial summary
In the tutorial we learned how to use the library's online databases and visited the Lourve online museum archivfe and the Medline Plus online database.

Tutorial Tasks
In todays tutorial we visited the ECU library web page and explored some of the support functions available on the site. We also learned how to access online journal articles. You can access the online journals via the ECU library website by clickng on the Journal Articles(Databases) Link

You can search for journal articles by a variety of categories. For example by Subject or title
Here are some useful search tips

1. Determine the key term
2. Check the full text and scholarly journals boxes
3. You can use quotation marks to find the exact phrase or word
4. Use only AND function, not OR function
5. Change criteria from abstract to document text
6. Keywords will be highlighted
7. If you are looking for a certain date, you can choose to change the Date Range to your desired choice
8. You can change the Databases drop down list to choose from which database you want the web to search in or you can leave it to search through multiple databases
9. Maybe change some keywords to narrow down your search results
10. Change the search criteria until you can narrow your search down to only a few

Journal Article - 'Economic impact of global warming on businesses'
Search results are above


Afterwards we visited the site www.medlineplus.gov and went through the health topics and did some of the interactive tutorials

MedLine Plus Home

The arrow indicates wher the interactive tutorials are:
Here is the list of the many interactive tutorials that you can read through
Here is a screenshot of the "What is Neurosurgery?" tutorial


And who do I think might use such a service? A pharmacist or chemist
Here is some info about Medline Plus



Readings
Finding what you want on the web
This site recommends that you do not only use Google, but use other search engines too. The site makes it clear that Google is not the only search engine on the internet.

Bare Bones Lesson 7 :Basic Search Tips
This site tells you how to get more out of your search engine such as using "the plus (+) and minus (-) signs in front of words to force their inclusion and/or exclusion"
+meat -potatoes is the example given by this site.