When you don’t know exactly which database to start off your search in, a 'general' or 'multidisciplinary' database might be the right starting point. You can always visit a general database because it specializes in a little bit of everything for everyone. The chances are really good that it will have a few articles on your topic.
Big general retail stores like Target and Walmart not only offer a wide variety of products, but they are owned by a corporation that makes money from the sale of these products. It helps us to recognize the corporations that own and operate these services, because we will see their names quite a bit as we conduct our searches.
In the LBCC library, both subject specific and general databases are owned by corporations too, corporations like EBSCO and ProQuest and Gale. Your go-to databases for finding scholarly journal articles, newspaper articles, and magazine articles might actually be owned by one of these “information corporations.” Each of these three information corporations have recognizable general databases. For instance, EBSCOhost has Academic Search Complete, Gale has Academic OneFile, and ProQuest’s general database is simply called ‘ProQuest’.
So when you don’t know exactly which database to start off your search in, you can always visit a general database. The chances are really good that it will have a few articles on your topic.
Academic databases that are specialized for a discipline or a subject are called subject specific databases. So if we know that our professor wants us to find a peer-reviewed article on the topic of “obesity” we will need to go to an academic database that will carry peer-reviewed articles and media on that topic.
Now let’s assume we haven’t found our article in a general database. For the sake of our shopping metaphor we could say that we didn’t find the designer jeans or the first edition comic book at Target. We will need to go to a more specialized store, like Self Edge for jeans or Frank & Sons for comic books. in order to find those gifts. Similarly, we will need to use an academic database that is more specialized in a subject than a general database.
Academic databases that are specialized for a discipline or a subject are called Subject Specific Databases.
Subject specific databases are also owned and operated by information corporations. Your go-to subject specific database will depend on the subject or discipline you are researching. For instance, Health Source is a wonderful resource for nursing students while American History and Life is perfect for history majors.
Similar to stores within a mall, databases are all owned by different corporations But stores all have core features like aisles, check-out stands, and clerks. Let's explore these features' corollaries to databases:
Now that you know each database will offer these core features, you can search for your sources with confidence.
Another way to answer "which database should I use" is to look at the scope of the databases. The scope is like the description of the database which will tell you what it specializes in, and what types of resources it has available.
Take a look at the screenshot below of the two databases. Information about the specific subject range, format, or date range a particular academic database covers is called its scope. An academic database may be narrow or broad in scope, depending on whether it, for instance, contains materials on one or many subject areas.
In the LBCC library, both subject specific and general databases are owned by corporations too, corporations like EBSCO and ProQuest and Gale. Your go-to databases for finding scholarly journal articles, newspaper articles, and magazine articles might actually be owned by one of these “information corporations.” Each of these three information corporations have recognizable general databases. For instance, EBSCOhost has Academic Search Complete, Gale has Academic OneFile, and Proquest’s general database is simply called ‘ProQuest’.
In the image below, we've highlighted the corporate owner of the two databases.
