This week's topic: Research Databases
I hope everyone feels confident in using the research databases available through Curry Library. If you have not had the opportunity to utilize these resources, I would like to talk about a few basics.
First, a database is a collection of data that is compiled, organized, and is usually searchable. Curry Library subscribes to companies who have collected the data and created a database for research purposes. This data includes full-text citations, magazine articles, journal articles, book excerps, newspaper articles, and abstracts, to name a few. What the company has done is taken a number of these resources and electronically formatted them for viewing online.
For example, if you wanted to look up articles on John Stuart Mill you could search through JSTOR (a literature-oriented database), which is one of the databases we subscribe to. It will return approximately 3500 articles about or referring to John Stuart Mill. If you would like to narrow the field further, you could modify the search to include On Liberty. This narrows the results to around 1350 articles. Then maybe you want to write a paper that specifically examines Mill and minority rights , so you add "minority rights" to the search and it returns around 300 articles. Truly amazing.
Curry Library currently subscribes to 85 databases, the results above were just from one. The articles are peer-reviewed, which means they are considered to be reliable sources. So the next time your instructor informs you that you have to have x number of reliable sources, you can feel confident that you will have no further to look than your library's databases.
As always, if you would like help on the databases or have any questions, you can always come to the library information desk or email libinfo@william.jewell.edu.