Academic Search Premier - Part 1

What is an Electronic Database?

An electronic database is a collection of citations, abstracts and sometimes full-text articles that are grouped together by single subject or multiple subjects available through a computer terminal.

The online database that we will be exploring is:

                                                                                ACADEMIC SEARCH PREMIER

          

The advantages of computer searching:

  1. Speed - computer searching is much more rapid than manual searching.

  2. Promptness- inclusion in a computer database often precedes by weeks the receipt of printed indexes.

  3. Flexibility - the area of a search can be narrowed or broadened by various combinations of subject index terms, author, titles, publication dates, languages, etc...

Academic Search Premier

The world's largest academic multi-disciplinary database.  Academic Search Premier provides full text for more than 4,600 publications, including full text for more than 3,500 peer-reviewed journals.  Coverage spans virtually every area of academic study and offers information dating as far back as 1975.  This database is updated on a daily basis via EBSCOhost.

  1. Begin at King's College Library web page.

  2. Click on Databases.

  3. Click on Academic Search Premier.

  4. Place a check mark in the box next to Academic Search Premier and click on it.

  5. Click on the Advanced Search tab.   

  6. You are going to type lepidoptera in the search box.

  7. Record the number of records you retrieve from your search.  

  8. Click on the Refine Search tab and set your publication date for Jan. 1999 to Oct. 2004. Click on the Search button.  Record how many citations you retrieved from your search.

  9. Click the Refine Search tab and arrow down to the bottom of the page and place a check mark next to titles owned by King's College.   Perform  the search by clicking on the Search button to see how many records you retrieve. Record how many citations you retrieved from your search.

Congratulations you have just asked three separate questions in one database!

The first search retrieved:

  1. The number of articles that contain the text word lepidoptera anywhere in the database.

  2. The second search retrieved the number of articles that contain the text word lepidoptera after selecting recent years to search.

  3. The third search retrieved the number of articles that contain the keyword lepidoptera and are owned by King's College for Jan. 1999 to 
    Oct. 2004.

***STOP -- It is time to take the "Academic Search Premier Part 1" quiz.***
Upon completion of the Quiz you must click on the HOME button to return to the Table of Contents to continue onto the next section.