Continuing Education

Continuing Education Guide for Instructors and Students

What is a Database and Search Tips

What is a Database
Search Tips

What is a database?

A Library Database is an online product purchased by the university that allows authenticated users to search its contents. Databases provide access to valuable resources, such as scholarly journal articles, magazine articles, news articles, data, reports, eBooks and much more, to help you with your research.

Online Access to Electronic Resources & Databases:

If you are accessing electronic resources from off-campus you will be asked to "authenticate" that you are currently registered at the U of C.
How to authenticate - easy to follow instructions and troubleshooting tips to log into library resources.

Using Boolean operators can help you when you are searching in a database.

AND - If you search Writing AND Grammar the results will include articles that contain BOTH search terms. In this case, articles that pertain to grammar in writing.
OR - If you search Writing OR Grammar the results will expand to include everything in the database pertaining to both writing and grammar, but not necessarily in the same article.
NOT - If you search Writing NOT Grammar the results will filter out articles that have to do with grammar and retrieve articles on writing, excluding grammar.

Truncation

To maximize retrieval, you can opt to use truncation * in your search term. Be careful not to cut the original word too short as then you will receive unwanted results about other terms.

For example - librar* will result in articles on library, libraries, librarians, etc.

Helpful Databases

See a listing of all databases alphabetically and by subject.

Try Google Scholar for Scholarly Literature:

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
To set up Google Scholar to detect UofC subscribed resources, refer to Google Scholar setup (in the Natural Sciences Programme LibGuide)
A subset of Google that only indexes academic journals. Pros: searching is very easy - just like for regular Google. Covers journals in many disciplines. Cons: Limited functionality for filtering results. May include some journals of dubious quality.
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete provides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 4,600 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,500 journals and a total of more than 10,000 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
- Access to subscribed content only
ScienceDirect is a database of peer-reviewed scholarly literature containing over 3,800 journals and more than 35,000 books. Disciplines covered include physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- Access to subscribed content and open access eBooks
JSTOR is a shared digital library which includes over 2,300 academic journals (dating back to the first volume ever published), along with thousands of monographs and other materials relevant for education. JSTOR also includes articles in the public domain, including Early Journal Content (U.S. content published before 1923 and non-U.S. content published prior to 1870).
Gale Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Gale’s premier periodical resource, Gale Academic OneFile, provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources—including thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. With extensive coverage in key subject areas such as, biology, chemistry, criminal justice, economics, environmental science, history, marketing, political science, and psychology, researchers are able to find accurate information and articles in both PDF and HTML formats with ease.

See a complete list of business databases.

ProQuest One Business (formerly ABI / Business Premium Collection) This link opens in a new window
ProQuest One Business is an intuitive and comprehensive business library containing millions of full-text items across scholarly and popular periodicals, newspapers, market research reports, dissertations, books, videos and more. Designed to help business researchers balance theoretical and practical learning, and acquire research skills that will make them successful in their courses and careers. ProQuest One Business content includes: company, industry, and country reports from providers such as Fitch Solutions and Economist Intelligence Unit, and in-depth analyst reports from J.P. Morgan; scholarly journals and ebook coverage from hundreds of publishers; full text of the three major global business news sources: The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the Financial Times; and a robust collection of videos.
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Business Source® Complete contains far more active, peer-reviewed, business related journals than any other database currently available. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals.
- This product supersedes Business Search Premier.
Canadian business & current affairs database This link opens in a new window
Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database combines full text and indexed content from all four subsets (Business, Current Events, Education, and Reference). Content comes from a broad range of Canadian sources and includes millions of full-text articles and records from 1933 to current, providing an ideal research environment for those interested in Canadian current events, business, science and technology, medical, humanities and the arts, and hundreds of topics.

The following databases are excellent sources for news articles, both global and national:

Factiva This link opens in a new window
Provides worldwide full text coverage of local and regional newspapers, trade publications, business newswires, press release wires, media transcripts, news photos, business-rich Web sites, investment analyst reports, market research reports, country and regional profiles, company profiles, historical market data.
- Due to license restrictions, access is limited to 6 simultaneous users.
- Interface in English, German, French or Chinese; contents in 22 languages.
Canadian Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Canadian Newsstream provides users with unmatched access to current Canadian news content with archives as far back as the 1970s, from over 360 news sources.
- Coverage is selectively from 1985 to the present.
- Includes fulltext of articles.
Canadian business & current affairs database This link opens in a new window
Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database combines full text and indexed content from all four subsets (Business, Current Events, Education, and Reference). Content comes from a broad range of Canadian sources and includes millions of full-text articles and records from 1933 to current, providing an ideal research environment for those interested in Canadian current events, business, science and technology, medical, humanities and the arts, and hundreds of topics.

Last Updated: Aug 18, 2023 2:13 PM
URL: https://libguides.ucalgary.ca/guides/continuing_education
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Subjects: Continuing Education

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