Database Skills (Proquest Research Library)

Getting Started

Welcome to the Database Skills Tutorial.

This tutorial will teach you about searching the ProQuest Research Library database.

This "Guide on the Side" tutorial allows you to continue to use the library websites while also following along with the tutorial.

Note: If you are off campus, you may be asked for your Pirate ID and passphrase to log in to the database.

The tutorial will take approximately 15 minutes.

Navigation

Before we begin, please take note of the following navigation buttons that you will see in the Guide on the Side panel:

Your Turn: This button represents an opportunity to use the database during the tutorial, so follow the directions!

Ask Us: Click this to be connected with a librarian via IM when the Research Desk is open.

Let's get started!

Sample Topic

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be using the sample topic of malaria.

The paper requirements say that you need at least 4 scholarly sources.

You find scholarly sources in a database, but what is that?

Defining Databases

You can find articles by searching in a database. A database is a searchable collection of information. Examples of everyday databases include iTunes and IMDB. A library database contains scholarly journal articles, newspapers, magazine articles, trade journals, and sometimes book chapters.

The database we are searching in this tutorial is called ProQuest Research Library. This is a multidisciplinary database, which means it is not limited to one field of study. It will have a lot of information about malaria from many different fields of study, such as healthcare, sociology, and more.

Keywords

Recall that our sample topic is malaria and that one step we must complete is to develop keywords.

Your Turn! Read the following encyclopedia entry from the Encyclopedia Brittanica on malaria and decide which keywords might be best for your search. 

"Malaria, serious relapsing infection in humans, characterized by periodic attacks of chills and fever, anemia, splenomegaly (enlargement of the spleen), and often fatal complications. It is caused by one-celled parasites of the genus Plasmodium that are transmitted to humans by the bite of Anopheles mosquitoes. Malaria can occur in temperate regions, but it is most common in the tropics and subtropics. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, entire populations are infected more or less constantly. Malaria is also common in Central America, the northern half of South America, and in South and Southeast Asia...the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2000 there were 233 million cases of malaria worldwide, with roughly 985,000 deaths resulting—most of them young children in Africa."

Keywords

Concept Check

Your Turn! Remember these as your keywords. You may wish to write them down.

Using AND, OR, or NOT

The Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT can be used to narrow or widen a search. Here is how they work:

Use AND to narrow a search strategy and to look for two or more terms in your result.

Use OR to broaden a search and to find either or both concepts in the result.

Use NOT before a term to exclude it from your result.

Your Turn! Take your keywords from the last step and make them in to phrases using one or more Boolean operators.

Using AND, OR, or NOT

Concept Check

Your Turn! Place these in to the search box and click search to see the results.

Limiters

You should have some results on your screen. But how do you make sure they are current, scholarly information? Notice that on the right side of the screen, you will see links for the following:

• Full Text
• Scholarly Journals
• Publication Date

Your Turn! Click on the scholarly link. Notice the results list getting shorter. Next, change the date range to the last 5 years. Click "update." Notice that the results list gets shorter again.

Limiters

A Note about Full Text

The Full Text option allows you to see only the items with the whole article attached to the record. Many times, if you click the purple Find It! button, you will see that ECU Libraries do, in fact, have the full text in another database or journal. If we do not have an article, we can normally get it for you via Interlibrary Loan.

Results

The next page will show your results list of scholarly articles about malaria in sub-Saharan Africa written in the last 5 years. To learn more about an article, click on the article title, or on the Preview button at the end of the title. The resulting record you will see has a short summary called the abstract. Read this to decide if the article is right for your project.

Your Turn! Click on the Preview button for a few of the results in the list to see their abstracts. Which would you consider using for your paper?

Creating a List

Next, notice the check box. If you would like to use an article for your research, you can add it to the list. The check box list is temporary, so we will learn how to send the articles in the next chapter. If you find yourself doing a lot of research in this database, you can also set up a My Research account to save items in a folder.

Your Turn! Add 4 articles to the list by clicking on the check boxes.

Sending the Articles

In order to access the articles in your list at a later time, you will need to email them to yourself.

Your Turn! Scroll to the top of the screen and notice that on the right is the option to Email.

Once you have accessed the Email option, you can do the following:

• Enter your own name and email address
• Enter a subject and comments in a message
• Change the citation format to the format required for your paper
• Click Send!

Sending the Articles

You should now have 4 items for your paper on malaria that have been sent to your inbox. These articles will be attached to the email if they were PDFs, or there will be a link back to the database. You will have the citation for your articles, as well, but make sure to check them over before copying and pasting them in to your bibliography.

Next Steps: If you wish to complete this tutorial again with your own topic, you may start over by clicking Back Home.

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.