Expos 20: Laughing Matters

Essentially, a database is a specialized collection of information that's been brought together, described and codified in some way, and then made searchable for a user. For the purposes of this work, you can think of a library database as a specialized search engine for citations or full text. 

The key point to remember about any library database -- and Harvard has hundreds -- is that it is constructed intentionally. Some things are included and some are not (you're never searching "everything"), but there's a unifying feature to each database. That may be an academic discipline (sociology), a geographical or language focus (Europe, Francophone studies, a topic focus (theater), a time-period focus (the seventeenth century), or an ownership focus (a library's collection).

Sometimes, though, that similarity will be a format --a database can be made up of all news articles, for example, or public opinion polls, or visual images.

Academic disciplines tend to have at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard: a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals. While a comprehensive search engine like Google Scholar or a library catalog like HOLLIS is often adequate or excellent for scholarly research, subject databases can be very helpful in narrowing and deepening your searches, especially for an assignment like this that asks you take a particular disciplinary perspective.

Databases can have radically different interfaces or radical differences in what they cover. However, research databases, more and more, follow certain design conventions. A lot of searching is about pattern recognition.

Expect to see features like these:

TWO TYPES OF SEARCH SCREENS: BASIC AND ADVANCED

• While basic screens are straightforward invitations to string words together (with AND, OR, NOT) and see where a search goes, the advanced search screens of databases are typically more powerful.
• Advanced search screens offer a host of other ways to manipulate language and more precisely and deliberately control and shape a search before you run it.
• And incidentally, advanced search modes exist for tools like Google, Google Scholar, and HOLLIS catalog.

TWO TYPES OF SEARCH LANGUAGE: KEYWORDS AND SUBJECTS

• Keywords are the concepts you think up to describe your topic or information need. Some academic publishers ask authors to list keywords that they thing describe their paper well, and they add these to the front page of the paper or elsewhere in the data about the paper. 

• Subject terms, by contrast, come from a standardized vocabulary list and are chosen by librarians or database creators to describe the intellectual content or emphasis of an item in precise and commonly understood ways.

Subject terms add value to a search by helping you find additional items that are related in emphasis, that cover similar content, or that have the same purpose.

Subject terms are what ensure that you get to all the relevant information on a given topic, regardless of the keywords with which you start. You might see them called descriptors  in certain databases.  Whatever the nomenclature, their usefulness is in helping  you get around the slippery nature of language.

SPECIAL SEARCH CONVENTIONS

OPTIONS TO FILTER, MODIFY, AND RE-SORT RESULTS

Most databases will present you with ways you can drill down into your initial search results to get better or just more targeted information to surface closer to the top.

Limiting to English (or another language), by resource type, to peer reviewed/academic journals, or to a range of dates are pretty standard ways of customizing a keyword search.

Most databases will rank results algorithmically by relevance, as Google does. If you prefer to see the results in chronological order, you should be able to resort your results by date order starting with your choice or the oldest or most recent articles first. 

LINKS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ONLINE (OR PRINT) AVAILABILITY

Many journal databases have complete full-text of the materials they contain.  When full-text links don't appear, however, you may see a button that looks like this:

Clicking on it will initiate a search through Harvard's other library databases in search of full-text.

If full-text isn't available, the software will prompt  you to put in a Scan and Deliver request. We'll get you a PDF of the article or book chapter another way, typically in a few days.

To use  with Google Scholar, follow the directions here to connect your Google Scholar account to get the most full-text results through the Harvard Library. 

Recommendations and Related Research

Check various areas of a database's web page. Focus not just on what's directly in front of you, but also on what's off to the side, or down below. There will often be embedded clues that might push your searching forward. For example, databases often have links to works related to the citation that you're looking at.