Section 8 – Searching Journal Databases
Objectives
This section will help you:
➢ Be able to access the databases
➢ Know how to conduct a basic search of Ebscohost
➢ Know how to conduct a basic search of Emerald
In today’s “information society”, there is an enormous amount of information written on different subjects. A large percentage of that information is provided in journals. In the past, people needed to spend hours upon hours browsing through the print journals to find articles on topics they were interested in. Today, databases make this much easier.
Databases contain references (or citations) to journal articles from many different journals, magazines, newspapers, and in some cases, even chapters from books. When you search a database, you are searching hundreds of different journals at the same time for articles on your topic.
We will be looking at two databases in particular; Ebscohost and Emerald. However these are not the only databases that have a business and law component. For information on how to search other databases, go to their help or Search tips pages.
How to find a database
The University subscribes to many databases. To find them:
Go to the Library home page www.library.cqu.edu.au
Click on More Databases under SearchSMART
There are three ways to find a database.
If you don’t know which database to choose, go to Browse Databases by Subject and select your subject heading from the drop down box:
You will be presented with a list of subject-specific databases Select the Marketing subject list.
The second way to find a database is to Browse Databases by Title and click on the letter that the databases starts with
A list of all the databases beginning with that letter is then provided. Click on the database you want.
The third way to access a database is to use the Quick Links section which is on the right hand side menu. Refer to the Quick Links box for commonly used databases.
When trying to access a database off campus, you will be asked to authenticate yourself by entering your student number and password (either your e.rolment PIN or the barcode number on your student card).
Example: searching Ebscohost
We will now look at how to search in Ebscohost using the keywords we identified in the example in section 3 – Synonyms.
Type in the keywords you have identified
Select what Boolean option you want to use (AND/OR) from the drop down boxes My example is customer preferences AND measurement
Click on search
Note that I have truncated the keywords measurement and searched “customer preferences”as a phrase.
If you need more than three rows for searching (if you have more than three keywords you need to combine), you can click on Add a row and more rows for keywords are provided.
Click on to provide more search boxes
When you click on search, you will get a list of the articles that match your search terms.
We are told how many articles are retrieved and what search terms were used.
journals/publications only.
We could limit the number of articles retrieved. A good way of doing this is selecting peer reviewed, which limits the search results to articles from peer reviewed journals.
Having chosen peer reviewed, we get the following results:
The search results can be further limited by selecting full text articles, as well limiting the date range to yield fewer results.
No. of articles Search terms / keywords
Notice that record 1 has fulltext options available (full-text - PDF). The fulltext of this article can be accessed on your computer by clicking on the article title or the format link.
Record 2 only has an abstract available in Ebscohost. However, the article may be available either in print or via another database. Click on the Article Linker button to check if full text is available in another database.
If the article is not available via Article Linker, or if it is not available, do a Journal title search in the CQUniversity Library Catalogue to see if CQUniveristy Library holds the journal (as explained in section 6).
Fulltext article available via these links
Abstract only available via Ebscohost. Use the Article Linker to check for alternative access or check the Library Catalogue.
Exercise 13
Using the keywords and synonyms you identified in Exercise One, perform a search in Ebscohost. Write your search strategy here.
Example: searching Emerald
Using the same search strategy we used in Ebscohost (“customer preferences” AND measur*), we will search Emerald.
To use the Advanced Search Screen
Type in the keywords you have identified and select the phrase searching boxes as needed.
Choose the fields you want to search for. Notice the drop down box has been changed from All Fields to All Fields (excluding fulltext).
Select the Boolean terms from the drop down boxes (AND/OR) Click on Search
Select search fields
To access the full text of the article, select either the View HTML or View PDF link below the citation.
You may have noticed that searching Emerald retrieved fewer results that
Ebscohost and the results may look less useful. This is because Emerald is a much smaller database and the articles are catalogued in a different way to Ebscohost.
Often the keywords that are successful in Ebscohost will not work in Emerald.
To improve results, try to use the synonyms you identified earlier to find more helpful articles. Another way may be to search for keywords in different parts of the article. For example, searching for highly relevant terms such as “customer preferences” in All Fields (excluding full text) and searching for more common terms such as measurement and strengths in All fields may highlight more relevant articles.
Exercise 14
Using the keywords and synonyms you identified in Exercise One perform a search in Emerald. Write your search strategy here.
