Skip to Main Content

COMM 10100: Foundations of Public Communication - Heeman

What are Databases? (Finding Articles)

Databases are online indexes of journal articles and abstracts. Many include full-text journal articles. Some databases also contain book chapters, newspaper/magazine articles, citations for books, and more.

In plain English, a database is what you would use to find articles!

Below, I have selected targeted databases for your assignment. However, you can always search the A-Z database list for database subjects to see what else might be available. Since the name of the database might not match the subject, searching is the best way to access databases. For example, CINAHL is a database about nursing, but it does not have nursing in its title. The search box at the top of the page allows you to search for subjects to narrow down your list of database choices. 

Sample Subject Search on A to Z database page

Finding Articles

These resources include general purpose, communication, psychology, business/marketing, and news databases. 

Communications:
Multi-subject:
Business/Marketing:
News:
Psychology:

These databases search across a variety of subjects and may be useful for many different courses. 

These databases may be useful to you in other classes and give you a sampling of what the library has to offer for various subjects.

Reading the bibliographies of a good article or book can be very helpful.  But how do you find one of the sources listed?  Look up the part written in italics.


If your citation looks something like the one below, then it's an article.  (Hint:  You know it's a journal article if you see volume/issue/page #s.)

   Morrow, P. ‘‘Those Sick Challenger Jokes.’’ Journal of Popular Culture. 20.4 (1987): 175-84.

Finding it: 

   -look up the title of the journal in the OneSource Journal Finder (Note:  Look up the journal title, which is in italics, not the "article title," which is in "quotation marks.")
   -if the journal is available electronically, you can search within the journal itself or click on the "Full Text Access" link, and check if we have access to the year you need
   -if the journal is available in print, read the rest of the journal's record to see if we have the volume/issue you need
 

If your citation looks something like the one below, then it's a book.  (Hint:  You know it's a book if you see a city and a publisher/press)

   Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation; Bellin, Joshua David; 2005, Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press.

Finding it:
   -look up the title of the book in the Hiram Library Catalog
   -if we don't have it, click on the OhioLINK button to find it in another Ohio library

Subject headings describe the content of each item in a database. Use these headings to find relevant items on the same topic.  Searching by subject headings (a.k.a. descriptors) is the most precise way to search article databases.

It is not easy to guess which subject headings are used in a given database. For example, the phone book's Yellow Pages use subject headings. If you look for "Movie Theatres" you will find nothing, as they are listed under the subject heading "Theatres - Movies."

Keyword searching is how you typically search web search engines.  Think of important words or phrases and type them in to get results. Once you find relevant articles, see what their subjects are and search using those!

Here are some key points about each type of search:

 

Keywords

vs.

Subjects

  • natural language words describing your topic - good to start with
 
  • pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" words used to describe the content of each item (book, journal article) in a database
  • more flexible to search by - can combine together in many ways
 
  • less flexible to search by - need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term
  • database looks for keywords anywhere in the record - not necessarily connected together
 
  • database looks for subjects only in the subject heading or descriptor field, where the most relevant words appear
  • may yield too many or too few results
 
  • if too many results - also uses subheadings to focus on one aspect of the broader subject
  • may yield many irrelevant results
 
  • results usually very relevant to the topic

When you search a database and do not get the results you expect, Ask Us for advice.

Precision in Searching

The words "AND," "OR," and "NOT" can help you make a search more precise. This is called Boolean searching, and it can seem really intimidating, but once you get the hang of them, Boolean searches can really help you!

For example, the search 'films AND psychology NOT children', will return a search with results that contain the keywords 'films' and 'pyschology' but not 'children' - important if you are only looking at adolescent psychology in films.

Learn more with this guide from the MIT libraries. It really helps explain Boolean searching, and you don’t have to be a computer scientist to understand!

Footer Example