Saturday
Nov. 22nd
Library Hours: Closed

Databases

This lesson was created by Barbara Kobritz, Instructional Services Librarian at TC3. Comments may be emailed to kobritb@tc3.edu

In this lesson you will learn to focus your database searches by:

using subject headings
using the "AND" operator
using various types of limiters

We’ll demonstrate these three concepts with a search of the InfoTrac database.

Subject Headings

InfoTrac contains about 40,000,000 articles from different periodicals. It’s great to have all that information at your fingertips, but sometimes the sheer size of a database makes it more difficult to find what you’re looking for. The most important tool you can use to help you narrow the search down (so you’re not scanning through thousands of irrelevant articles) is subject headings. Imagine those 40,000,000 articles stored in the world’s biggest filing cabinet. If you had to look through that cabinet to find articles on a certain topic, wouldn’t you like to know what the information had been filed under instead of just guessing where things might be?

Subject headings tell you where things are filed. They are the words and phrases used by the "filers" to describe books and articles in databases. Just as in a physical file cabinet, if you find out what those headings are and use them, you will get better search results.

Finding the Subject Headings

But how do you know what the subject headings are?

That’s what we’re going to demonstrate in this search of the InfoTrac database.

It will show you

how to find the subject headings;
how to narrow your search by using more than one subject heading term; and
how to use other special limiters to narrow the search further.

Let’s start with a concrete example: A student asked a librarian for help finding information about "cyberlaw and jurisdiction". Since Internet activities do not take place in any physical locale, he wanted information about which courts have responsibility for hearing which cases, or jurisdiction. We’ll start at the InfoTrac search screen and work through a successful search on this topic using subject headings.

My first step is to find out what the subject heading is in InfoTrac for "cyberlaw". I use the term cyberlaw in a Key Word search. Key Word simply means that we are ‘looking around’ in the records (or descriptions) of all the articles in this database for the term "cyberlaw".

I’ll click on the Search button and the result will appear at the top of the search area. It tells us that in this database there are 108 articles with the word "cyberlaw" somewhere in the description, maybe in the title of the article, maybe in the abstract (or summary), maybe in the subject headings. Let’s click on the View button to retrieve the list of articles.

The View button takes us to a screen where the 108 articles are listed. We can click on any title to look at the description for that article. One of the articles is called "Cyberlaw 2.0". After the title it says in parentheses Symposium: Intellectual Property, E-commerce and the Internet.

Clicking on the title takes us to a screen where there is a citation for the article. But the text of the article is not there. The database is just telling us where and when the article was published.

We’ll come back to this idea of the missing text later.

The missing text is not a problem at this stage because, remember, what we are looking for initially is not articles, but subject headings. We want to know the correct subject heading in this database for this topic.

The subject headings for this article are farther down the page, after the citation.

Instead of "cyberlaw", the term they use in this database is "Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules."

Now that we know what the correct subject heading is we can return to our search screen and do a more focused search. This time instead of articles that have "cyberlaw" anywhere, we want articles that have "Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules" in the Subject field. We change Key Word to Subject, change cyberlaw to Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules and click on Search again. By typing in the first word that came to mind, cyberlaw, we got 108 hits. By finding the correct subject heading and using it appropriately, we got 5833 hits! Our first search missed almost everything on this topic. This is why we encourage you to explore the power of computer technology - beyond typing in a word and letting the computer do the thinking for you. Computers can’t think. You can!

So we have thousands of on-topic articles to choose from, and now we can start narrowing the search by combining the concept of Internet Laws with another concept. This student asked about jurisdiction, so let’s use the "AND" to add that concept. On the search screen you are given three search boxes joined by the word "AND." So you can search for articles that contain this thing, that thing and a third thing.

Combining the Subject "Internet -- Laws, Rules and Regulations" AND the Keyword "Jurisdiction" gives us 190 articles. The "AND" operator will always narrow the search, since now an article must meet not just one but two criteria to be included in the list.

Sometimes students who find no articles, or very few, decide to add more words to the search. That won’t help. If you’re not getting responses to your search, what you need is not more words but different words.

Glancing down our search result of 190 articles, they seem highly relevant. If you look through a few of them you will learn that "jurisdiction" is a subject heading. For example let’s click on the fourth article on the list, "The Developing Law of Internet Jurisdiction."

The citation tells us that this article appeared in July 2003 in a magazine called The Advocate published by the Vancouver Bar Association in Canada. The beginning of the article reads:

"Jurisdiction is fundamental to any legal system. It is the alchemy that transforms the opinion of a judge into an expression of the law.

Generally a superior court has jurisdiction only within some specific geographic area--a province, a state, a country, and so on. However, the revolution in worldwide communications through the Internet challenges our geographically based conception of jurisdiction. Unlike previous technologies, the World Wide Web makes information instantly accessible throughout much of the world, regardless of its point of origin. Information remains continuously available until removed and is inexpensive to access. Geography is thus no longer a meaningful barrier to communications. With Vancouver, Vienna and Varanasi all sitting cheek-by-jowl in the Internet world, there is obviously the potential for great inconvenience and prejudice to either the plaintiff or the defendant in Internet litigation, depending on how the jurisdictional question is determined.

How, then, do our traditional theories of jurisdiction adapt to a communications world where geography no longer matters?"

This is exactly the issue the student raised in his original request for information. When you find an article that is exactly what you are looking for, you should always scroll down to the bottom of the page and see what the subject headings are for that article. At the bottom of this article we find the subject heading we asked for (Internet – Laws, Regulations and Rules) and also the subject heading "Jurisdiction." The fact that jurisdiction is a subject heading explains why our search result was so relevant. We are speaking the database’s language – subject headings.

Knowing that "jurisdiction" is a subject heading, we could go back and change "jurisdiction" from a Key Word search to a Subject Heading search, but that seems like overkill to me. I would be pretty happy with this search. The student who asked for help with this topic certainly was!

We have now seen how finding the right subject headings and using the "AND" operator can focus a search. Let’s return to the search screen and make note of a few other limiters that can help narrow your search.

One way to limit your search is to check the box for articles with text. If you remember back to the beginning of this search, you’ll recall that we chose an item from the results list where the article itself wasn’t really there. All we had was the citation and we noted that we would come back to this idea. This time we are limiting to articles that do have the text, eliminating all the entries that are citation-only. This is a great tool if you are finding that the database gives you plenty of information to work with. (Otherwise hang onto those citations and ask a librarian to help you find the full article.)

Our search for Internet -- Laws, regulations and Rules as a subject heading combined with jurisdiction as a Key Word retrieved 190 on-topic articles. When we limit the same search to articles with text we find there are 24 such articles in this database.

Returning to the search screen one more time, here’s another way to limit the search. This time I will limit to "peer-reviewed journals."

These are the scholarly or academic or research publications.

(If you are unclear about scholarly journals you can review the "EVIDENCE" module of Library Lessons, or talk to your teacher or a librarian.)

For this "peer-reviewed" search we find there are 32 scholarly articles, some of which have the text and some of which are citation only.

There are other limiters and they vary from one database to another. "Full-text" and "peer-review" (or scholarly) are the ones you will use the most. You can use limiters in any combination. Obviously, the more limits you put on a search, the fewer hits you’ll get. Sometimes limiters can be quite useful in bringing a very large result list down to a manageable set.

Finally, let’s just note that in InfoTrac, as in most databases, you can Print articles out or Email them to yourself. You’ll find the buttons for these functions on the screen where you are looking at the article itself (not the screen that shows the search result list). Whenever a database provides a print function, use the function within the database rather than the print command in your file menu or toolbar.

A Reminder About Subject Headings

People who "file" things for the database company put them under subject headings.

When you come along as a searcher it only stands to reason that, if you find out what terms the database uses and use those terms for the search, you will get better results.

EXAMPLE:: Most databases use the term "capital punishment" rather than "death penalty." Try searching the TC3 book catalog for one and then the other. Capital punishment will get you just about twice as many hits as death penalty.

The Key to Good Database Searching

As you saw from our sample search, it’s not difficult to find out what the subject headings are for a given topic in a given database.

Start with the topic word you have in mind.
Look through the results for relevant articles.
Note the subject headings used for the relevant articles.
Try again, using the subject headings to bring the search into focus.

A Confession

Database searches used in online tutorials are rehearsed. I went through this search many times before recording it. In order to streamline the examples, I picked articles that I already knew would give us useful subject headings. In real live searches you may have to look through the first ten or twenty (or more!) articles, making note of terms that look useful. There may be more than one useful term for a concept. It’s okay.

Play around.
Try a few things.
See what works.

Since you can’t go in every direction in one search, jot down ideas you want to keep in mind for future searches. Students often settle for the first results they get. That’s a mistake.

Asking For Help

There are people in the world who love figuring out subject headings and helping people find information. We love this stuff so much that we chose to do it for a living. We’re called reference librarians and there are five of us at TC3 eager to delve into your topic with you.

You can call us (607-844-8211 x4363) or email us (library@tc3.edu)

but we highly recommend that you come to the library, if at all possible, and let one of us work through this search process with you. That will get your project off to the best possible start.

Summary

Information in databases is categorized by subject headings.
You will make your task a lot easier if you spend a few minutes figuring out what they are. Your first search is not for articles; it’s for subject headings.
"AND" combines two or more terms to narrow your search.
Each database has special limiters to help you focus and target your search.
If you can’t find anything on your topic, it’s likely that you haven’t found the right subject headings.
If you’re stuck, a librarian can help.

Keep in mind that real life searches are often much messier than the ones in demonstrations. You may have to make several tries before you get exactly the right combination of subject headings. Just remember to find your subject headings and use them. And remember that the librarians are always happy to help you.

Here’s where to find us:

Come see us at the library: Current hours are posted on the Library Gateway.
By Phone: 607.844.8222, Extension 4363
By Email: library@tc3.edu
On the Web: www.tc3.edu/library. On every page on our site, there's a link to Ask-A-Librarian. Post your question. We'll respond within one business day.

Last update: Monday, February 11, 2008

Tompkins Cortland Community College

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Saturday Nov. 22nd Library Hours: Closed
		Databases This lesson was created by Barbara Kobritz, Instructional Services Librarian at TC3. Comments may be emailed to kobritb@tc3.edu In this lesson you will learn to focus your database searches by: using subject headings using the "AND" operator using various types of limiters We’ll demonstrate these three concepts with a search of the InfoTrac database. Subject Headings InfoTrac contains about 40,000,000 articles from different periodicals. It’s great to have all that information at your fingertips, but sometimes the sheer size of a database makes it more difficult to find what you’re looking for. The most important tool you can use to help you narrow the search down (so you’re not scanning through thousands of irrelevant articles) is subject headings. Imagine those 40,000,000 articles stored in the world’s biggest filing cabinet. If you had to look through that cabinet to find articles on a certain topic, wouldn’t you like to know what the information had been filed under instead of just guessing where things might be? Subject headings tell you where things are filed. They are the words and phrases used by the "filers" to describe books and articles in databases. Just as in a physical file cabinet, if you find out what those headings are and use them, you will get better search results. Finding the Subject Headings But how do you know what the subject headings are? That’s what we’re going to demonstrate in this search of the InfoTrac database. It will show you how to find the subject headings; how to narrow your search by using more than one subject heading term; and how to use other special limiters to narrow the search further. Let’s start with a concrete example: A student asked a librarian for help finding information about "cyberlaw and jurisdiction". Since Internet activities do not take place in any physical locale, he wanted information about which courts have responsibility for hearing which cases, or jurisdiction. We’ll start at the InfoTrac search screen and work through a successful search on this topic using subject headings. My first step is to find out what the subject heading is in InfoTrac for "cyberlaw". I use the term cyberlaw in a Key Word search. Key Word simply means that we are ‘looking around’ in the records (or descriptions) of all the articles in this database for the term "cyberlaw". I’ll click on the Search button and the result will appear at the top of the search area. It tells us that in this database there are 108 articles with the word "cyberlaw" somewhere in the description, maybe in the title of the article, maybe in the abstract (or summary), maybe in the subject headings. Let’s click on the View button to retrieve the list of articles. The View button takes us to a screen where the 108 articles are listed. We can click on any title to look at the description for that article. One of the articles is called "Cyberlaw 2.0". After the title it says in parentheses Symposium: Intellectual Property, E-commerce and the Internet. Clicking on the title takes us to a screen where there is a citation for the article. But the text of the article is not there. The database is just telling us where and when the article was published. We’ll come back to this idea of the missing text later. The missing text is not a problem at this stage because, remember, what we are looking for initially is not articles, but subject headings. We want to know the correct subject heading in this database for this topic. The subject headings for this article are farther down the page, after the citation. Instead of "cyberlaw", the term they use in this database is "Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules." Now that we know what the correct subject heading is we can return to our search screen and do a more focused search. This time instead of articles that have "cyberlaw" anywhere, we want articles that have "Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules" in the Subject field. We change Key Word to Subject, change cyberlaw to Internet -- Laws, Regulations and Rules and click on Search again. By typing in the first word that came to mind, cyberlaw, we got 108 hits. By finding the correct subject heading and using it appropriately, we got 5833 hits! Our first search missed almost everything on this topic. This is why we encourage you to explore the power of computer technology - beyond typing in a word and letting the computer do the thinking for you. Computers can’t think. You can! So we have thousands of on-topic articles to choose from, and now we can start narrowing the search by combining the concept of Internet Laws with another concept. This student asked about jurisdiction, so let’s use the "AND" to add that concept. On the search screen you are given three search boxes joined by the word "AND." So you can search for articles that contain this thing, that thing and a third thing. Combining the Subject "Internet -- Laws, Rules and Regulations" AND the Keyword "Jurisdiction" gives us 190 articles. The "AND" operator will always narrow the search, since now an article must meet not just one but two criteria to be included in the list. Sometimes students who find no articles, or very few, decide to add more words to the search. That won’t help. If you’re not getting responses to your search, what you need is not more words but different words. Glancing down our search result of 190 articles, they seem highly relevant. If you look through a few of them you will learn that "jurisdiction" is a subject heading. For example let’s click on the fourth article on the list, "The Developing Law of Internet Jurisdiction." The citation tells us that this article appeared in July 2003 in a magazine called The Advocate published by the Vancouver Bar Association in Canada. The beginning of the article reads: "Jurisdiction is fundamental to any legal system. It is the alchemy that transforms the opinion of a judge into an expression of the law. Generally a superior court has jurisdiction only within some specific geographic area--a province, a state, a country, and so on. However, the revolution in worldwide communications through the Internet challenges our geographically based conception of jurisdiction. Unlike previous technologies, the World Wide Web makes information instantly accessible throughout much of the world, regardless of its point of origin. Information remains continuously available until removed and is inexpensive to access. Geography is thus no longer a meaningful barrier to communications. With Vancouver, Vienna and Varanasi all sitting cheek-by-jowl in the Internet world, there is obviously the potential for great inconvenience and prejudice to either the plaintiff or the defendant in Internet litigation, depending on how the jurisdictional question is determined. How, then, do our traditional theories of jurisdiction adapt to a communications world where geography no longer matters?" This is exactly the issue the student raised in his original request for information. When you find an article that is exactly what you are looking for, you should always scroll down to the bottom of the page and see what the subject headings are for that article. At the bottom of this article we find the subject heading we asked for (Internet – Laws, Regulations and Rules) and also the subject heading "Jurisdiction." The fact that jurisdiction is a subject heading explains why our search result was so relevant. We are speaking the database’s language – subject headings. Knowing that "jurisdiction" is a subject heading, we could go back and change "jurisdiction" from a Key Word search to a Subject Heading search, but that seems like overkill to me. I would be pretty happy with this search. The student who asked for help with this topic certainly was! We have now seen how finding the right subject headings and using the "AND" operator can focus a search. Let’s return to the search screen and make note of a few other limiters that can help narrow your search. One way to limit your search is to check the box for articles with text. If you remember back to the beginning of this search, you’ll recall that we chose an item from the results list where the article itself wasn’t really there. All we had was the citation and we noted that we would come back to this idea. This time we are limiting to articles that do have the text, eliminating all the entries that are citation-only. This is a great tool if you are finding that the database gives you plenty of information to work with. (Otherwise hang onto those citations and ask a librarian to help you find the full article.) Our search for Internet -- Laws, regulations and Rules as a subject heading combined with jurisdiction as a Key Word retrieved 190 on-topic articles. When we limit the same search to articles with text we find there are 24 such articles in this database. Returning to the search screen one more time, here’s another way to limit the search. This time I will limit to "peer-reviewed journals." These are the scholarly or academic or research publications. (If you are unclear about scholarly journals you can review the "EVIDENCE" module of Library Lessons, or talk to your teacher or a librarian.) For this "peer-reviewed" search we find there are 32 scholarly articles, some of which have the text and some of which are citation only. There are other limiters and they vary from one database to another. "Full-text" and "peer-review" (or scholarly) are the ones you will use the most. You can use limiters in any combination. Obviously, the more limits you put on a search, the fewer hits you’ll get. Sometimes limiters can be quite useful in bringing a very large result list down to a manageable set. Finally, let’s just note that in InfoTrac, as in most databases, you can Print articles out or Email them to yourself. You’ll find the buttons for these functions on the screen where you are looking at the article itself (not the screen that shows the search result list). Whenever a database provides a print function, use the function within the database rather than the print command in your file menu or toolbar. A Reminder About Subject Headings People who "file" things for the database company put them under subject headings. When you come along as a searcher it only stands to reason that, if you find out what terms the database uses and use those terms for the search, you will get better results. EXAMPLE: Most databases use the term "capital punishment" rather than "death penalty." Try searching the TC3 book catalog for one and then the other. Capital punishment will get you just about twice as many hits as death penalty. The Key to Good Database Searching As you saw from our sample search, it’s not difficult to find out what the subject headings are for a given topic in a given database. Start with the topic word you have in mind. Look through the results for relevant articles. Note the subject headings used for the relevant articles. Try again, using the subject headings to bring the search into focus. A Confession Database searches used in online tutorials are rehearsed. I went through this search many times before recording it. In order to streamline the examples, I picked articles that I already knew would give us useful subject headings. In real live searches you may have to look through the first ten or twenty (or more!) articles, making note of terms that look useful. There may be more than one useful term for a concept. It’s okay. Play around. Try a few things. See what works. Since you can’t go in every direction in one search, jot down ideas you want to keep in mind for future searches. Students often settle for the first results they get. That’s a mistake. Asking For Help There are people in the world who love figuring out subject headings and helping people find information. We love this stuff so much that we chose to do it for a living. We’re called reference librarians and there are five of us at TC3 eager to delve into your topic with you. You can call us (607-844-8211 x4363) or email us (library@tc3.edu) but we highly recommend that you come to the library, if at all possible, and let one of us work through this search process with you. That will get your project off to the best possible start. Summary Information in databases is categorized by subject headings. You will make your task a lot easier if you spend a few minutes figuring out what they are. Your first search is not for articles; it’s for subject headings. "AND" combines two or more terms to narrow your search. Each database has special limiters to help you focus and target your search. If you can’t find anything on your topic, it’s likely that you haven’t found the right subject headings. If you’re stuck, a librarian can help. Keep in mind that real life searches are often much messier than the ones in demonstrations. You may have to make several tries before you get exactly the right combination of subject headings. Just remember to find your subject headings and use them. And remember that the librarians are always happy to help you. Here’s where to find us: Come see us at the library: Current hours are posted on the Library Gateway. By Phone: 607.844.8222, Extension 4363 By Email: library@tc3.edu On the Web: www.tc3.edu/library. On every page on our site, there's a link to Ask-A-Librarian. Post your question. We'll respond within one business day. Copyright 2005 Tompkins Cortland Community College Last update: Monday, February 11, 2008
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