User guides and help

What is an online database? - eResources versus printed material - Isn't everything on the Internet anyway? - What is info2go? - Can I use info2go? - How to login to info2go - Which online database to use? - Guide to Evaluating web pages - Consolidated searching

Want help using an online database?  

Online tutorials and help sheets for the online databases

Basic searching tips

The databases may look different and contain different information but the principles of searching them is basically the same as for searching the Library Catalogue.

Databases are generally much bigger than the catalogue – the largest ones index thousands of magazines and journals. The wide scope of databases makes them very useful for tracking down the material you need, but it can also be frustrating if you find that your searches are returning a large volume of irrelevant material.

• All databases will have one or more search boxes on the first screen. This is where you type in your keywords (important words) that you want the database to look for.

• If you have more than one search term you can use the other boxes or connect your search with AND to make your search more specific. E.g. Distance education AND online.  

Each database has its own help screens available.

Too many hits, or not enough?

• Try reducing your hits by adding in another keyword. Join the keywords together with AND. For example, education AND early childhood AND curriculum.

• Expand your hits by using synonyms or broader terms. Join synonyms with OR. For example, fashion OR costume.

• Expand your hits by using a truncation symbol for keywords that could have alternative word endings. For example, environment* will find environment, environments, environmental, environmentalism, environmentalist.

• Make your search more specific by doing a phrase search whereby you enclose a phrase in speech marks or quotes. For example, "Treaty of Waitangi" will look for those words side by side as a phrase.   

Consolidated searching - learn how to search multipule database at the same time.