Video Tutorials: Choose a Database

The Library Databases are accessible through the library webpage by clicking on the Databases link located under the word FIND on the left hand side of the page. 

Click the letter that corresponds with the first letter of the database you want to search (I for Issues & Controversies or C for Credo). Or use the All Subjects drop down menu to find the databases that relate to a certain subject area such as Education or Psychology.

Please remember that you can find detailed research assistance for many departments and even for some classes by going to the Research Guides link under FIND on the library webpage.

When choosing a database consider the following:

Discipline: Databases often have a broad disciplinary focus, for example a single Education database, rather than a separate database for Elementary, Secondary and Higher Education topics. The databases menu is full of specific disciplinary focused choices (like PsychINFO) as well as multidisciplinary choices for when your research topic touches multiple points. (like Academic Search Premier)

Coverage: Types of records, years of publication of the included journal articles, and number of journals included in a database. Some databases include the most recent articles while others index embargoed journals. *(meaning databases may include articles from a journal but exclude the most recent six months published) Other databases may include archived digital copies of journals that are no longer published.

Full text: Many databases provide full text coverage of Journals. Meaning you can search, download and print the articles. Others may only provide indexed records, providing the research with the citation and a brief overview but not the entire article. For example, as of Spring 2021, an EBSCO database called APA PsycArticles had over 200,000 article records, all of which had Full-Text available. In contrast, the EBSCO database APA PsycInfo had 4.9 Million article records(!) but most of those were record-only.

• Controlled Vocabulary upon standard terms for different topics, subjects, or issues. There is a good reason for this. Sometimes students and researchers new to a topic might not know all the different ways to describe the topic, and by searching with the wrong keywords, they might miss important information. For example, you may search in a medical database for flu shots and find the result list surprisingly small. Why is this? By browsing the database's controlled vocabulary, you will find that the more common term for flu shots in the medical literature is influenza vaccine.
• Citation Linking connects the article to other scholarly works that cite it. This allows the database user to find scholarly works that may be similar to the original source.