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

III. BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES

Given below is a partial list of bibliographic databases available at Skyline Library. This list is divided into 2 categories: periodical indexes and library book catalogs.
Note that some are proprietary databases, i.e. available to paid subscribers only. Some are accessible off-campus, and some are not.

1) PERIODICAL INDEXES

NOTE: It should be apparent by looking at the above list that no single periodical index covers every subject and periodical being published. Instead, indexes focus on certain subject(s) and specific magazines and journals. This is what’s known as the scope of an index. The scope of an index is determined by:

• the subject(s) covered
• the total number of periodicals covered
• the time period covered

2) LIBRARY BOOK CATALOGS

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES –
THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bibliographic databases are composed of thousands of bibliographic records. Bibliographic records (sometimes called citations, references, entries, or simply records) are detailed descriptions of a book, article, or other document. Every record is composed of categories of descriptive information called fields.

Fields are the individual parts of a record. For example, most records have an "author" field, a "title" field, a "subject" field, and so forth. Taken together, these fields make up the complete record.

Let’s look at two examples of typical bibliographic records that represent formally published documents. Here is the front cover of a history book written by Henry Mayer:

The bibliographic record from an online library catalog describing this book would look something like this:
(NOTE: The appearance of records vary among library catalogs, but the basic information would be the same for all.)

Notice that this record happens to be made up of 6 fields (named on the left) that fully describes Mr. Mayer’s book in terms of physical detail (number of pages, etc.) and bibliographic detail (author, title, subject focus of the book, etc.).

Let’s take another example. Here’s an article from Scientific American magazine:

Given below is the bibliographic record for this magazine article. The record is taken from a general index called the InfoTrac OneFile. Although it does not give
you the name of each field, you should still be able to "see" this record in terms
of separate fields.

In addition to the record, many bibliographic databases now offer the complete text of many of the articles and documents in their database. If the full-text is not available, most will provide an abstract (i.e. a summary) of the article.

By paying careful attention to the information contained in the fields of a record, you can learn a great deal about a book or article and its relevance to your research before you actually retrieve the item from the shelves or display it full-text on your computer screen.

FOUR BASIC METHODS OF SEARCHING BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES

Most bibliographic databases offer 4 basic methods of searching:

• Author
  
• Title
  
• Subject
  
• Keyword

To search by one of these methods, however, you must “inform” the database of your choice. Sometimes you can specify your search method at the first search screen you’re brought to after connecting to the database. But often you will need to go to an “advanced” search mode and use a pull-down menu and select your choice. Given below is the basic appearance of a pull-down menu from a bibliographic database. The design and number of choices will vary from database to database.

Sample pull-down menu from a bibliographic database:

KEYWORD
TITLE
AUTHOR
SUBJECT
ABSTRACT
ISSN
DATE
JOURNAL/SOURCE

Let’s now examine each of the 4 basic search methods:

• Author: when you are looking for a book or article written by a specific author
  
  
• Title: when you are looking for a book or article and you know the exact title, or even just a few words from the title
  
  
• Subject: allows you to search a database under an approved word or group of words known as subject headings. Subject headings are often very formal language and not the words you would first think of to describe a subject. For example, the formal subject heading for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is:
  
  Japanese Americans – Evacuation & relocation, 1942-1945
  
  Precise subject headings bring maximum order and consistency to a database. Once you know the valid heading for your subject, you can run a search using that heading and feel reasonably certain that all books or articles on that subject in that database will be found.
  
  The complete list of official subject headings used by a database is known as its controlled vocabulary.
  
  
• Keyword: allows you to think of your own “keywords” to describe your subject, dispensing with standardized subject headings. The computer will look for your search term(s) in every field of the bibliographic record (author, title, subject, abstract, etc.) -- even the full-text of the article if available. By contrast, the other search methods (author search, etc.) tell the computer to look only in that specific field for your term(s).
  
  Keyword searching can be done using only one word:

  multiculturalism
  cancer
  childhood
  smoking
  women
  california

  You can also search by a multiple-word phrase:

  child abuse
  global warming
  illegal immigration
  capital punishment
  nuclear proliferation

  All of these words and phrases, however, are very broad and a keyword search under any one of them would give you an unmanageably large search result. To add precision to your search, you should combine search terms by using connecting words called logical operators.

  A commonly used logical operator is the word AND. It allows you to connect 2 ideas related to your research topic into one search statement. For example:

  child abuse AND prevention
  
  homeless AND women

  smoking AND women
  
  California AND immigration
  
  For each of these search statements, the computer would only retrieve records that contain both keywords, no matter which field(s) these keywords appear in. For example, here is a record found in the InfoTrac OneFile for the search statement smoking AND women :

The computer pulled up this article because both keywords – smoking, women --
appear somewhere in the record. In fact, notice that both keywords appear several times in the title, abstract, and subject fields.

In sum, keyword searching is a powerful search method that offers you the following advantages:

• you don’t need to know or second-guess the precise subject headings
  used by the database
  
• it allows you to combine search terms and get more precise search results

Keyword searching, however, does have one major drawback – the high likelihood of retrieving false hits. A false hit is a record that is not relevant to your topic. This happens because the computer will retrieve records that contain your terms regardless of the context, meaning, or use of those terms within the article or book. For example, a keyword search for the term “apple” will pull up records about the fruit, Apple computers, Apple Records, and people named Apple. The computer does not know what you mean by the word “apple.”

To illustrate further how the computer could retrieve a completely irrelevant record, examine closely the record given below. This is one record pulled up by a general periodical index in response to a keyword search for: smoking AND health.

This article is about the health dangers associated with deep fried foods and has nothing to do with cigarette smoking. Nevertheless, notice that both of our search terms appear in the record:

* the periodical title field has the word "health"
* the abstract field has the word "smoking" and the word "health" (in red)
* the subject field has the word "health"

This explains why the computer pulled up this record. The problem, of course, is that the word "smoking” is used in an entirely different context, i.e. “smoking oil” instead of cigarette smoking.

Be prepared to find false hits when doing keyword searching. If too many false hits appear, you may need to change your search terms.