Choosing a Useful Database

The Highline College Library has a variety of databases and other resources available for research. A database is simply a searchable collection of information, usually in electronic format, so even Google qualifies as a database. (Check out this video to learn more about what a database is: What Are the Library Databases and Which One Should I Use? Links to an external site.)

While about 5% of the information on the web is free, the rest is accessible only by logging in or paying for the information. Luckily, Highline College Library databases allow us to get to a lot of this information without having to pay for it ourselves. This is because the library has purchased access to these databases for students, faculty, and staff, so we can use them for our research needs.

One Search

This module already mentioned the One Search tool, which is located on the library's home page. We can either enter search terms into the search box, or click Advanced Search to get more search options (see example below). When we use One Search, we search many of the library databases at the same time, and might find books, electronic books, videos, or articles in our search results, so this is an efficient way to do research.

 

In the image above, we can also see links to Databases and Streaming Videos. Sometimes, we're doing research in a specific discipline like Nursing or Psychology, and we want to search databases with a lot of sources in those disciplines.

 

Databases

When we click the Databases link on the library home page, we can see a list of popular databases, but we can also view an alphabetical list of databases, view databases by subject, and even look at databases which contain books, videos, and reference sources like encyclopedias.

 

If we look at the databases by subject, we can see there are groups for Psychology, Health & Medicine, etc. There are 4 databases that include Psychology-specific information, and 20 that include Health & Medicine-specific information.

 

Streaming Videos

The library also provides access to databases with streaming videos. These academic videos are another good sources for research information. All of the videos should be captioned so we can watch them anywhere, even when sound isn't an option.