Databases Explained
Picture perfectly curated cabinets dedicated to themes such as history, newspapers, or businesses. Everything inside relates to that topic and has verified factual information found and organized by human hands. That’s a database.
We all know Google; we use it every day. But have you heard of Academic Search Premier, WorldCat, Gale Academic OneFile, Reference USA, or NoveList? Researchers can find all these and more through the ‘Research’ tab on your library’s website. They can help you find your next book, fix your car, start a business, and, most notably, writing research papers. Yet, they remain an unappreciated resource, likely to continue as students have limited access to librarians.
Why Not Just Use Google?
Good question. You should. It’s free, easy to use, and more than adequate for most everyday things you look up. But databases give you some things that Google doesn’t have.
Dictionary.com defines a database as a comprehensive collection of related data organized for convenient access, generally on a computer.
Databases like Academic Search Premiere and a search engine like Google use the same underlying principle: they collect information and store it in a way that makes it searchable. Meaning that, based on the definition above, both are a database.
The difference comes from how they collect the information. Google and other search engines use a digital force called ‘spiders’ to find new content and place it in their database based on the creator’s assigned keywords. A database takes the same approach but uses humans to find suitable, unbiased, age-appropriate materials on a specific topic and puts them together for the user.
Think of Google as an endless supply of file cabinets containing a file on every single item on the internet. Then picture smaller file cabinets dedicated to themes such as history, newspapers, or businesses. Everything inside relates to that topic and has verified factual information found and organized by human hands. That’s a database.
Different Rules for Different Systems
One of Google’s most remarkable features is its ability to ‘guess’ what you’re thinking. You start typing, and it presents you with a list of possible queries based on the most popular searches with those words. This guesswork feature requires a lot of work to create, so most people working there focus on improving this feature.
‘What was the first battle of the civil war?’ Based on your geographic location, Google figures you mean the US civil war and knows how to use grammar rules to create an answer. Databases don’t focus their energy on their search feature, so you will need a different approach to get the best results. Google can understand a whole phrase and break down the subject and a verb. Put an entire phrase into a database, and it assumes you want an article that includes every word in that phrase. A database will need you to focus on the significant ideas you are researching, in this case, civil war’ and ‘first battle.’
Think file cabinets. The subject heading is an individual file inside that cabinet that contains all the articles the humans who reviewed the documents decided belonged there. That list does not represent a guess but a match to a word on that list.
Your Librarian Can Help You Explore Databases
Say you want to research an article on spying. How would you do it differently when using a database? Rather than start typing, as you can with Google, taking 10 minutes to figure out a plan of attack can lead you to quality articles faster and get you on to the next stage of your research paper. The best place to start is at your local school, academic, or public library.
Schools across the country are determined to continue to educate our kids, including having them write research papers, a difficult task since many schools lack a librarian. Supporting access to librarians for scholars across the United States is essential.
Visit everylibrary.org to learn how you can support the crucial resources that libraries offer their communities.
