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

II. DATABASES

You may recall from Lesson 1 that there are 4 types of information access tools:

• Indexes
• Catalogs
• Bibliographies
• Web search tools

When faced with a research project, many students immediately turn to Web search tools such as Yahoo! or Google. This approach, however, is not wise. As you will learn more fully in Lesson 9, Web search tools access only a small part of the total information available on the Internet, and much of what they find is of questionable value. For that reason, it is best to begin your research using indexes and catalogs.

Indexes and catalogs are available in both print and computerized format. Indexes and catalogs in computerized format are called databases. Many databases are accessible through the Internet, and therefore are often called Internet databases or online databases. They are created by publishers, businesses, government agencies, professional and scholarly groups, and many other credible organizations.

Databases provide highly organized collections of information and can be classified into 4 types:

• Bibliographic: databases that provide bibliographic records. Bibliographic
  records describe books, periodical articles, and other sorts of formally published documents. Periodical indexes and library book catalogs fall into this database category.
  
  
• Directory: databases that provide factual pieces of information about organizations, companies, products, individuals, or materials
  
  
• Numeric: databases that provide statistics and data in tables and graphs
  
  
• Multimedia: databases that combine text, graphics, photos, video, and sound

Some databases combine 2 or more of these types and don’t easily fit into a single category. When doing research, the most valuable databases are usually bibliographic databases, so let’s examine them closely.