Database Searching: Education Abstracts/Full Text & Professional Development Collection

What do you want to know? Let’s say you are looking for information about blogs being used in the classroom. Where will you find applicable information?

What’s wrong with Google? Google is a great resource for many kinds of information, but is there scholarly research there? Do you know how to find any? A Google search for the word “blogs” returns approximately 20,600,000 hits. The word “blogging” returns about 61,500,000 hits. The phrase “school blogs” returns 114,000 hits. Searching for “school” AND “blogs” returns 89,000,000 hits!

What’s wrong with Google? There’s lots of information but... Will you look past the first page or two of results? Which information is valid? Which information is useful to you as an educator or education researcher?

There’s a better way!

Why use a research database? You will find abstracts for materials you can locate at your library or through interlibrary loan. You will find links to full text articles in scholarly (peer reviewed) journals. You will easily be able to limit/refine results. With a little practice you will be able to find reliable information which precisely suits your needs.

Education Abstracts/Full Text “Education Full Text brings you comprehensive coverage of an international range of English- language periodicals, monographs and yearbooks. Full text of articles cover to cover, from hundreds of journals, make this a one-stop source for research.” -H. W. Wilson Company,

Think About Terms We are already using an education database so we can assume, for the moment, that any results will relate to education. Start by entering the term “blogs” in the search field. 122 records are found; a much more manageable number.

Still Too Many Results? Use built in limiting features to narrow the results. First, click on “All Limit Options” Since the technology is always evolving, and blogging is a hot topic, limit the search to the past year, Under “Year” place 2006 in the “From” field and 2007 in the “To” field. Click “Limit Results Now” found at the bottom of the page.

Ta Da! Now there is a list of 63 records. Many of the records have the full text articles attached. The articles originate from a variety of respected education journals. (Painless. And much easier than sorting through the 20 million hits we started with at Google.)

Want to see these results again? You could repeat the same search, or... After looking through the resources, identify the ones you find valuable by clicking the empty box next to “Store;” the word changes to “Added.” After marking all the records to save, click on “Stored Records,” it’s at the top of the page next to the “Browse” button. You will see a list of choices; print the records, download them to your computer or a memory stick, or to yourself for later.

Another Web 2.0 Example: Now you want some information about wikis in the classroom. Searching Google for the term “wikis” results in 9,460,000 hits. Searching for the phrase “education wikis” results in 1,370,000 hits. Searching for “wikis” AND “schools” yields 919,000 hits. How does a database compare?

Professional Development Collection “Professional Development Collection™ provides a highly specialized collection of electronic information especially for professional educators, professional librarians and education researchers. This collection offers information on everything from children's health and development to cutting-edge pedagogical theory and practice.” -EBSCO Publications

Search Terms Begin by entering “wiki*” in the search box. The * allows Professional Development Collection to search for wiki and it’s plural, wikis. There are 222 results. Not a bad start.

Limiting Next to the results, on the left, there is a box labeled, “Narrow Results by Subject.” After scanning the subject choices, “Internet in education” seems fitting. Clicking “Internet in education” narrows the results to 23. If you are only interested in records containing full text links; you can indicate this by clicking the “Refine Search” tab, clicking the box next to “Full Text,” and clicking the “Search” button again.

Now there are 15 results. If you have registered (for free) with MyEBSCOhost, you may sign in and add the results you wish to keep to a folder.** You add a result by clicking the file folder icon to the right of the record. These results will stay in your folder, even if you end the session. The results may also be exported, downloaded, printed, or ed from the folder, much like the results in Education Abstracts/Full Text. **You can save results without signing in, but they will not be available once you have ended your search session.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat! (Or search a database.) You could have begun by entering the following into the search box: wiki* AND education; as well as clicking the “Full Text” limiter right away. This way, the search yields 37 initial results. Again, choose “Internet in education” from the “Narrow Results by Subject” box. Guess what...

15 records are found! (Sound familiar?) There is no perfect way to search a database. You can start with broad terms and narrow slowly, step by step. You can be more specific up front. You know your research needs best, so you choose.

Your turn: Formulate your research question/choose your topic. Identify some search terms to begin with. Log on to a research database. Off you go!