Using Subscription Databases

First Steps By now you should have done the following: Read the Pro/Con.org article on the topic you have selected for your paper Looked up the definitions of words in the article you don’t know Read the article again checking the definitions as you go Looked for another definition if the one you originally wrote down doesn’t fit the context of your article Highlighted all the keywords in your article that you will use when searching databases and search engines.

First Steps This is the subject of the paper I plan to write . . .

First Steps Look at the “Pros & Cons by Category” section Paragraph 2 My topic Look at the “Pros & Cons by Category” section Use these topics as a source of keywords possible subjects for your paragraphs Paragraph 1 Some keywords Paragraph 3 Paragraphs in my paper

Finding Subscription Databases Go the HCA Media Center website’s Reference Shelf page. Link is on your desktop screen.

Finding Subscription Databases Scroll down until you see Click on the image.

Finding Subscription Databases Thanks to our state tax system, the Electronic Library of Minnesota (ELM) gives residents of Minnesota “free” access to databases that would normally cost us money to use. The word “subscription” means that you’ve paid money to get something (a magazine that is mailed to your house every month) or to use something (an online database).

Using a Subscription Database ELM has a lot of databases. Get to know them by USING them! For our sample search we’ll look at this one: Middle Search Plus

Using a Subscription Database This is the first screen you will see. Click on “Visual Search”.

Using a Subscription Database A visual search makes it easier for you to understand the search results and to see topics related to your search. Search results. Related topics.

Using a Subscription Database Enter your search term in the box Select “Full Text” 250 results

Using a Subscription Database Narrow your search by matching the results with your keywords.

Using a Subscription Database Try different combinations of search terms and keywords.

Using a Subscription Database Articles that match your search terms appear in the green boxes. Click on one of the boxes and a summary shows up on the right. Click on “More” to see the entire article.

Using a Subscription Database Any article you select will always give you more search terms. They come in handy if, for example, the keywords you found in your article aren’t giving you enough information try typing any one these in the database search box.

Using a Subscription Database Let’s suppose that along with the keywords you identified in your Pro/Con article, you’ve found some other good search terms through the Visual Search you just completed. Try this . . . 2. Enter two or three of your search terms in the boxes. 3. In each of the drop-down boxes, select “TX All Text” 1. Click on “Advanced Search” This search yielded 368 results. It’s not a bad number, but let’s see if we can reduce it by a few hundred or so by doing one simple thing.

Using a Subscription Database Instead of telling the database to search for your terms in all the words of the article, let’s tell it to search for them just in the Subject Terms that the database has assigned to the articles. 1. Click on the drop-box arrows and select “SU Subject Terms”. 2. Remember AND, OR, and NOT? These are Boolean search terms. AND narrows your search by asking the database to return only results that have all the terms you typed in the search boxes. This search yielded 41results. Mission accomplished!

Using a Subscription Database Scroll down and look at the articles. No. 10 looks interesting. Click on its title.

Using a Subscription Database These are links to other subject terms. Now scroll down. Here’s the article I picked. Read the “Abstract”. An abstract is a short summary of the article.

Using a Subscription Database Here’s the full text . . . every word of it. You can listen to it and link to topics within the article.

Using a Subscription Database The article is great! I will probably use it as one of the sources in my paper. I need to do three more things. 1. Scroll back to the top of the article and look at the Tool bar. Click on “Print” to print the article. (If the print function doesn’t work, highlight and copy the article to a Word doc and then try printing it.) 2. Click on “Cite”. Scroll down until you see MLA. Copy the citation on the print-out of the article. You will later type this citation on your Works Cited page of your paper exactly as it is given here.

Using a Subscription Database Use the same keywords and subject terms when using a search engine like Google. Do the same things I’ve shown you here for any other subscription database you decide to use.