Where are Article Databases Located?
The Valley Library subscribes to almost 100 article databases, many available through the Web. The best way to find one appropriate to your topic is to go to the Databases List on the Valley Library's Web site.
In this section, we'll look at Academic Search Premier, one database of several offered by EBSCOhost as an example of a general article database. It covers over 3000 general magazines and scholarly journals with complete text of articles immediately available for about 1200 of the periodicals included. It is listed under most subjects as a Basic Index.
The main features for searching article databases tend to be similar, although the details may vary depending on the company that provides the database. Databases are often provided to libraries by companies that specialize in article databases. These companies often provide many databases from their sites. Each company generally has its own way of setting up searches, but their main features are similar.
Getting Started
These are the usual steps used to connect to and search any particular database:
- Click on Databases from the library homepage. Select the database to search from either the Valley Library's Alphabetical list of database names or from the listing of database by broad subject catagory.
- Once connected to the database company's page, you may need to select the database(s) you want to search.
- Type the keywords for your topic into the search box on the screen. Click on the Search button and the results of your search will show on the next screen that comes up.
Online help is usually available for any of these steps. You can find more information on the content of the database, how to set up your searches as well as other options you might have available to you.
