Lesson 4 Contents:

Learning Objectives

1. Preface

II. Databases

III. Bibliographic Databases
* The Building Blocks of Bibliographic Databases – The Bibliographic Record
* Four Basic Methods of Searching Bibliographic Databases

IV. Key Points to Remember

Lesson Four Quiz

Lesson Four Exercise

I. PREFACE

Now that you have gained an overview of your subject, narrowed your subject into a specific research question, and conducted your own information needs analysis, you are ready to begin step 5 of the research process:

Choose appropriate access tools, develop a search strategy for each tool, and conduct a search.

This lesson will discuss why indexes and catalogs are the best access tools for the
in-depth research done at step 5, and then describe some common search methods for bibliographic databases.