Ebsco databases are an excellent source of scholarly journals for research in many academic disciplines.
EBSCO databases are a collection of research databases that can be very useful for academic research. Here are some key reasons why EBSCO databases are good for research: EBSCO offers access to thousands of full-text academic journals, magazines, trade publications, newspapers, books, and other scholarly resources across a wide range of subject areas. This provides researchers with a vast pool of information to draw from. EBSCO has numerous specialized databases that cater to different disciplines, such as business, medicine, social sciences, education, and the humanities. This allows researchers to find highly relevant content for their specific field of study.
Searching
The articles are arranged by subjects using terms developed by the database publisher, similar to how the library catalog uses the Library of Congress Subject Headings. It is also organized by keywords supplied by the authors. The default search is by keyword. Like the catalog, you can also search by several fields including title, author, journal source, and other information.
The easiest way to search is to use Advanced Search to form a search string on your topic. Start with a question, break it into the most relevant nouns (and sometimes verbs and adverbs), and put them in individual blanks. You may also want to adjust the Boolean terms at the ends of the search blanks to broaden or narrow your search.
Remember, AND between terms forces the results to have both terms. Using OR returns either term wherever they appear, whether or not.
Sorting Search Results
ASC has several tools to sort search results called Filters. Some of the most useful are the Peer-reviewed, Publication date, and Publication type. Most of these are found below your initial search. You can sort out the peer-reviewed articles to ensure high-quality scholarly information. Likewise, you can also narrow the date range. This can be useful for getting the most current articles, or from a certain historical period so you can compare how a topic has changed over time. You can also select the publication type including academic journals, books, newspapers, and other material types from here.
Reviewing Results
After you sort your results, browse the list to see how well the titles fit your question or topic. You may have to revise your keywords a number of times to get good results.
Notice that in the library catalog, the official subjects are shown under the results. One of my keywords here was the actual subject, or at least most of it, and my keyword "drinking" was connected to subjects for alcoholic beverages. Always look for the subject terms in ANY database; they are your best bet because they can give you additional keywords to search with that are variations of your original term. This can help focus your research, like the well-defined topic PUBLIC HEALTH nursing in this case. Also, note that you can tell if the item is full-text from here by looking at the access options.
