Databases provide access to scholarly journal articles, popular magazines, newspapers....
Access the databases from this guide or from the Libraries homepage and click on the Databases tab and type in the name of the database.
For your assignment, the Academic Search Ultimate database (Ebsco) and the Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (Proquest) seem to provide relevant results, so everyone should try and use both of those.
They cannot be searched together, you will need to search one and then search the other.
But, if you do not find enough or the results are not relevant, then add additional databases.
For Ebsco, add to the Academic Search Ultimate database:
There are many other databases to add, just depends on the number of results you first get and also the country and the issue you are researching.
Some possible additional databases:
America. History and Life
Historical Abstracts
International Political Science Abstracts (there are a limited number of users - you might get the message that the database is not available - you will need to try again later)
Military and Government Collection
and then, depending on what specific country and issue you are considering you would also add:
American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies
Bibliography of Asian Studies
Business Source Complete
EconLit
Education Source
Index Islamicus
Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies
SocIndex
You do not want to search the databases individually, you will have too many duplicate sources.
Always search databases together to remove duplicate sources.
You have to get into one database first and then add the others.
For Proquest, maybe add to Worldwide Political Science Abstracts:
PAIS
Since you will already be in Academic Search Ultimate, click on - choose databases - and add the others.
Since you will already be in Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, click on - change databases - and add
See the tab labeled: Searching Multiple Databases
Multi-disciplinary database providing information for nearly every area of academic study. Includes an enormous collection of the most valuable peer-reviewed full text journals, as well as additional journals, magazines, newspapers and books. Multidisciplinary subjects including: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language & linguistics, arts & literature, medicine, ethnic studies. 1965- present.
Searching is trial and error. Try and think of different ways to say the same thing. Start with keywords to describe your topic, within results, read the abstract and look at the subject headings to identify additional keywords to use and revise the search (if needed).
Search Strategies:
Start with keywords (place phrases in quotes), use connectors (or / and) and look for the subject headings specific to each database.
—
Place quotes around a phrase.
Using quotations marks means that the database will search for the entire phrase, not the individual words.
"Democratic Republic of Congo"
"armed forces"
"international influence"
_______
Use the * for truncation
When you put an asterisk at the end of a search term it searches for words with any possible ending.
authorit* = authority or authoritarian or authoritative or authoritarianism
econom* = economy or economics or economies
partnership* = partnership or partnerships
cause* = cause or causes
—
use - or - to connect synonyms
policy or policies
influence or impact or consequence*
military or "armed forces"
culture or cultural or ethnicity or identity or values
—
use - and - to connect concepts
syria and authorit* and econom*
chad and authorit* and (military or "armed forces")
Example:
investigating whether the economy has any influence on the authoritarianism government of Saudi Arabia
databases=
Academic Search Ultimate, International Political Science Abstracts, Business Source Complete, EconLit, Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies, Military & Government Collection
strategy =
authorit* and govern* and "saudi arabia" and econom*
Ways to filter / limit your Results
Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals or Academic Journals
Date
Language
Re-do the search and change search field from - Select a Field - to AB Abstract
Best Practice:
Click on a title, read the abstract before going to get the fulltext. Why?
1. Make sure the article is relevant
2. Might be additional keywords to add to your search
Find the fulltext by clicking on the pdf or html link.
Results:
There are two main databases within Proquest that will be useful for your topics. Similar to Ebsco, get into one database first and then add the other by clicking on - change databases.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
PAIS
When searching, if you retrieve too many results and they do not seem to be relevant, try changing the search field from Anywhere
to either
Abstract - AB
or
Anywhere except full text - NOFT
Can limit to peer-reviewed from the start
govern* and "saudi arabia" and econom*
Sometimes you will not see a link to the fulltext but will see:
Make sure you click on the link, it is possible we will have the article in fulltext or it might be in print or we might not own the item (then you could request it via Interlibrary Loan (if you have the time, it will take a few days to get a scanned copy)
IF YOU DO NOT FIND WHAT YOU NEED PLEASE EMAIL ME.
Results from the Find@UMD
