L IBRARY C ATALOGS & [O THER ] D ATABASES Joy Garretson & Jennifer Nabzdyk, MLC Technology Academy: Session 4 January 5, 2014 * Technology Academy content originally developed by the collaborative efforts of the MS State University Extension Service and Mississippi Library Commission.

O VERVIEW What is a Database? Common Features Access Points Basic Searching vs. Advanced Searching Boolean Searching Truncation/Wildcards Library Catalogs LearningExpress Library Mississippi Digital Library Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) MAGNOLIA

W HAT IS A DATABASE ? “A large, regularly updated file of digitized information (bibliographic records, abstracts, full-text documents, directory entries, images, statistics, etc.) related to a specific subject or field, consisting of records of uniform format organized for ease and speed of search and retrieval and managed with the aid of database management system (DBMS) software.” -ODLISODLIS Simply – Digital collection of information that can be searched.

E XAMPLES OF D ATABASES Library Catalogs Academic Databases EBSCO Primary Search Novelist Consumer Health Search Engines Google Yahoo Bing

C OMMON F EATURES OF D ATABASES

A CCESS POINTS

B ASIC VS. A DVANCED S EARCHING All Words vs. Specific Phrases Unwanted Words or Word Combinations Language Limitations File/Format Type Limitations Year Limitations Domain Limitations* *Search Engines

B ASIC

A DVANCED

B OOLEAN S EARCHING What is Boolean Searching? Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases to limit, widen, or define your search. Boolean Operators: AND, OR, and NOT The Boolean search operator OR is the default setting of any search engine

B OOLEAN S EARCHING Cat – 334 Results Classified as murder : a cat in the stacks mystery Scratch the surface : a cat's lover's mystery The cat sitter's pajamas Dog – 441 Results A dog named Boo Dog eat dog The redhead from Sun Dog Cat AND Dog – 31 Results Home-prepared dog & cat diets Cat to the dogs Raining cat sitters and dogs Cat OR Dog -744 Results Classified as murder : a cat in the stacks mystery Scratch the surface : a cat's lover's mystery The cat sitter's pajamas A dog named Boo Dog eat dog The redhead from Sun Dog Home-prepared dog & cat diets Cat to the dogs Raining cat sitters and dogs 1.OR – More results will be found because dog or cat are in the descriptions 2.AND- Less results will be found because both dog and cat are in the descriptions

T RUNCATION /W ILDCARDS Truncation — a symbol added to the end of the root of a word to instruct the database to search for all forms of a word. Librar*= Librarian, Library, Libraries, Librarians, etc. Wildcards — a symbol used to represent any character. Wildcards can usually be used at the end of a word or within a word. You can use this symbol to search variant spellings of a word. You can use more than one pound sign to stand in for more than one character. Each pound sign represents 0-1 characters. Example: Wom#n = Women, Woman, etc.

L IBRARY C ATALOG E XERCISE Go to a library catalog and list the number of results for the following: Conduct a search using the term “computer” ________ Conduct a search using the term “technology” ________ Conduct a search using the Boolean phrase “computer AND technology” ________ Conduct a search on using the Boolean phrase “computer OR technology” ________ Conduct a truncation search using the term “computer” ______

L EARNING E XPRESS L IBRARY

D IGITAL P UBLIC L IBRARY OF A MERICA (DPLA)

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