1. 11 INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE SEARCHING  What is a database? Types Providers  ETH-Bibliothek Access to databases Database information  SFX functionality  Search strategies  Search rules  Contact

2. 22 TYPES OF DATABASES A database contains:  Primary information (= direct “condensed” information) Fact databases (statistical, numerical, lexical datasets) Superweb (Swiss statistics) Beilstein, Gmelin (chemical data and formulae) Kompass, LexisNexis (market and company information) Publicus (Swiss yearbook of public life) Journal Citation Report JCR (citation data on journals, statistics)  Secondary information (= metadata, bibliographic information) Subject bibliographies Web of Science, Agricola, Agris, GeoREF, Biotechnology Abstracts, FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts), Medline ®, Transport, SciFinder and many more Library and network catalogues NEBIS, KVK, WorldCat Book retailers' directories VLB, Global books in print  Primary and secondary information Full-text databases LexisNexis Press, reference works, encyclopaedias, JSTOR (digital journal archive) Image databases, multimedia databases…. and all kinds of combinations! Sources: http://is.uni-sb.de/diskussion/reader/it/it2/, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fachdatenbank (12.04.2010)

3. 33 PROVIDERS OF DATABASES  Institute for Scientific Information – Web of Knowledge (ISI Thomson-Reuters) Web of Science with Conference Proc. and Chemical Databases, JCR, BIOSIS, Previews, Derwent Innovations Index (patents), INSPEC  SciVerse SCOPUS (Elsevier) multidisciplinary database  OVID SP Agris, Agricola, CAB Abstracts, FSTA, GeoRef, Geobase, OVID Medline, PSYNDEX, Transport, etc.

4. 44 ETH-BIBLIOTHEK: ACCESS TO DATABASES  Searching the Knowledge Portal / the NEBIS recherche by database title  Access by subject  Access by alphabetical list

5. 55 DATABASE INFORMATION

6. 66 SFX FUNCTIONALITY Context-sensitive service, enabling you to access the document you require (possible from almost all DBs)  Link to the full text  Link to the library catalogue  Link to the table of contents of a journal  Link to an interlibrary loan service (ILL)

7. 77 SEARCH STRATEGIES  Formulate the search query (type of information, topic)  Subject: general overview ↔ selected information? Initial (term) search in Wikipedia, encyclopaedias, including reference works Advanced search in subject databases  Synonyms, truncation, links, phrase search, alternative spellings, singular/plural forms, time coverage, etc.  The more precise the query, the more accurate the hits but, equally, the more often documents fall through the net  Document and save your search history!

8. 88 SEARCH RULES I: BOOLEAN OPERATORS, PHRASE SEARCH AND Switzerland AND tourism - both terms must occur in the document (intersection) OR bicycle OR bike - at least one of the terms must occur in the document (union) NOT Asia NOT India - the document contains the first term but excludes the second (subset) SAME Clinton SAME Obama - both terms must occur within the same sentence NEARclimate NEAR/3 change – between both terms are zero to three other words ( ) Search order precedence: operators are weighted differently depending on the database, e.g. AND > OR > NOT – or the other way round! This weighting can be changed using brackets. Tip: Consult the Help pages! " " "hybrid car" - keeps terms together, or searches for them in the document in that exact order (phrase search)

9. 99 SEARCH RULES II: TRUNCATION / WILDCARDS Truncation (T)NEBIS Recherche / Wissensporta l WoS Scopu s OVID SP LexisNexi s Pub Med Unlimited truncation calls up all the possible versions of the given word. From no characters to many. Example: “plantT" will find “plant" and “plants", “plantation”, “planting", etc. Limited truncation (n = number of characters) * not applicable with just one character *: or $ or * $ n ! to be placed before and/or after a root word * n * (Please note: Truncation in the multi-word search can lead to a phrase search!) The obligatory wildcard character is used for calling up specialised plural forms; it requires exactly ONE character to be present. Example: "dogT" will find "dogs", but not "dog"! ??# The optional wildcard character replaces ONE or NO characters. Example: "coloTr" finds results containing the words "color" or "colour" $ (only WoS) ? not applicable with just one character Tipp: Consult the Help pages! - often there is a context-specific Help function available (OVID SP, Web of Science, Scopus)

10. 10 CONTACT ETH-Bibliothek – Grüne Bibliothek Manuela Schneider Universitätstr. 16 8092 Zurich manuela.schneider@library.ethz.ch ETH-Bibliothek - Information Rämistr. 101 8092 Zurich info@library.ethz.ch October 2012