Databases collect and organize large amounts of information for easy retrieval. Each result in a database has a record: a collection of related information treated as one unit. Each record has multiple fields (or single pieces of information).
Let’s look at an example of a database in the form of a telephone directory. You might have these three contacts listed in your cell phone:
|
Name |
Address |
Phone Number |
Email Address |
|---|---|---|---|
|
DuVernay, Ava |
13 Selma Way |
555-5678 |
blackfilm@oscar.net |
|
Picasso, Pablo |
627 Guernica Lane |
555-1234 |
cubism@art.com |
|
Takei, George |
117 Enterprise Road |
555-9101 |
navigator@star.org |
The database is your contact list, which lists all three contacts. Each contact is a record, a single unit that represents the full person. Each record has four fields, a single piece of information about the person; in this case, the fields are the name, address, phone number, and email address. You can use this knowledge to perform simple searches.
When you search databases, the individual results are records. When you click on a record, you’ll see the information about it listed by fields. You will need to read records and fields to identify information used for citation and evaluation; you also need the record to help access the source.
Different databases contain different types of records and the fields describing them, so you’ll need to decide which is most useful for your specific needs. For example, in the Library Catalog, also known as Books & More tab, you can find books, e-books, magazines, scholarly journals, government documents, and even films.
However, if you need specific articles from scholarly journals, magazines, or newspapers, you will need to use the databases listed under Articles & Databases, most of which are periodical databases. A periodical is anything published at regulation intervals (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly), including scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers.
To fully meet your needs, you may need to search multiple databases and locate different types of sources. Knowing about records and fields can help you search for information and evaluate the results you find.
Let’s look at an example from one periodical database, Academic Search Complete. From the search screen below, you can see that in addition to searching all fields we can also search specific fields, such as Author or Subject Terms.
Here is an example of a result in Academic Search Complete:
This result is actually a shortened version of the full record. It contains citation information, beginning with the title of the article. You can also see the format in which it is available, in this case both HTML Full Text and PDF Full Text formats. The PDF Full Text is especially useful since it looks just like a scanned version of the print article.
Not all results from databases have the full text of the article! The article may be in a periodical we have on the library’s shelves. If we don’t have it, we can get the article from another library using Interlibrary Loan. Whenever you need assistance tracking down an article, be sure to Ask A Librarian for help.
To get the full record, click on the hyperlinked title. For example, clicking on Van Gogh’s Holland from the result above gives you:
In the full record, you see all of this record’s fields listed on the left (e.g. Source, Document Type) and this article’s data for those fields on the right. One useful field is the Abstract. This is a summary of the article so you may determine whether it is relevant or not.
Another useful field is Source. Remember, articles are published in periodicals, so to locate or cite them, we have to know both the article and periodical title. The Source field starts with the periodical title (the title of journal/magazine/newspaper) and also lists the publication date, which can help in determining the currency of the source.