 Hi there, welcome to this Kirkwood Library video on database searching. My name is Kate and I'm a librarian here at Kirkwood. I'm going to show you how to access an article database called Academic Search Elite and also explain why it's so important to add library databases to your research toolbox. We are all familiar with using Google to search for information. It's a very useful tool. It's easy to access and because we use it every day, it's also very familiar to us. It's like the cozy slippers you put on to shuffle around the house. They're comfortable, but you can't depend on them to get you very far outside your comfort zone. Just like you don't want to depend only on Google when you are researching to expand your knowledge and understanding. Library databases are important information resources you can search for information. Databases are collections of selected articles, online ebooks or videos that you access through the library website. Databases are very different from Google because they don't search for just anything that happens to be online. They search materials that are professionally written, edited and published, most of which can't be found online without paying for them. These are high quality materials that are essential to your research. Honestly, these databases are not like comfy slippers. They're more like hiking boots. You don't wear them every day, so they might feel a little awkward at first, but they are sturdy, well made and will get you where you need to go even in uncharted terrain. And the more you wear them, the more comfortable they get. So let's take a look at one library database that you can try on right now. Remember databases are resources you search through the library website because the library pays subscription fees for students and faculty to get access to these high quality materials. So we will begin at the library homepage. To get to the databases, look for a link that mentions databases or articles. We see here on the Kirkwood library homepage a link along the left that says articles in databases. This link is sometimes labeled A to Z databases. Pause here and go to the library homepage if you want to follow along. The link is on Kirkwood's My Hub and in Talon. As you can see, the library subscribes to many different databases, 99 at this point. The one we're going to look at today is called Academic Search Elite, sometimes called EBSCO Host, which is the name of the database provider. This is a great all-purpose go-to database. It has a huge collection of articles, is kept very current, and covers a wide range of topics. It's also common to find it in any academic school or public library. So even after you leave Kirkwood, you will likely still be able to access this database through your local library. Okay, you might notice a couple of unique things about this search page. First we have three search boxes at the top instead of just one. Second, there is a lot going on underneath those search boxes with many search options as they're called. Let me reassure you this page still functions as a very basic search screen. It just has extra features you may want to use in the future as you become a more expert user of this database and as your research needs become more complex. Now for now, I am going to show you some of the ways to make use of the multiple search boxes and leave the search options for another time. The search is split into three boxes to help you combine different keywords or phrases into one search. In each of these three boxes, you will want to put only one word or term. Spend some time coming up with good keywords for your search. Good keywords are single words or terms that describe the most important ideas in your topic or research question and match the words or terms used by authors and database indexers. You do not want to put a whole question or a long description of your topic in this search box. Keep it very short and simple. For example, if my research question is, would a sugar tax be an effective strategy to improve the health of American people? My most important idea or keyword is probably sugar tax or maybe sugar tax and effective or sugar tax and health. Don't worry about coming up with a single perfect search because there likely isn't one. A good search is a process of trying out different combinations of keywords until you have located good quality and relevant information. I'm going to try just sugar tax to begin. Then I will probably add in one of the other terms after I see how that goes. I know you're thinking, didn't she just tell me to only use one word per search box? In this case, sugar tax is a single term or phrase. So I'm going to just use one search box for the term. And I'm not going to add a second term in a second box yet because I'm not too sure about the term sugar tax. Is that what people are calling it or should I try something else? So I'm going to scan my results now to determine two things. Are any of these relevant to what I'm looking for and what subjects show up in the article citations related to sugar tax? I've highlighted a number of things here that stand out to me when I scan my results. Instead of the words sugar tax, I notice sugar sweetened beverage tax. Okay, that's a more specific idea, right? But it looks like something to follow up on. So I'm going to make a note of that term in my research notes. I also see junk food taxes and law and legislation in the subject terms. Again, these terms are related to my research question. So I'm going to add these to my research notes. I want to remember them for later searches. For now, I'm going to scroll down and look at a few more results before I decide to adjust my search terms. Here's another citation from my search results. Again, I see some different terms that are related to sugar tax, but not exactly the same. And again, I'll make note of these different terms in my research notes. At this point, my strategy is to continue scanning the first 10 to 20 article citations. I'm not going to click on these yet. I'm going to scan the citations and look at the titles and subject terms to see if any of them seem to have information I could use. In this case, even though my search term sugar tax is not appearing exactly in the subjects, it still ended up retrieving some pretty relevant results. So rather than going right into a new search, I would first click on a few of these and scan the articles to see if there's anything there I can use. A few final notes on Academic Search Elite and some very helpful built-in functions it has. When you get to the point where you have an article you want to use, you'll click on the title to get to the full record. Over on the left, there should be a link that says full text. Click on that to view the whole article. Over on the right side of the page are lots of helpful tools that let you print, save, and link back to the article. There is a listen function that will read the article to you, and there is a citation tool that creates a citation for the article in many different formats, including MLA style. To use the citation, click on the button, then scroll down to the style you want. You can then copy and paste it into your document. These citations are usually accurate, however, they are computer-generated, so may contain errors. Copy and paste the citation, but then double-check it for possible mistakes. Thank you for visiting the Virtual Library and good luck with your research. If you could use some help with your research, just contact a librarian through the library website where you can chat, text, or email us.