Tutorial on Library Research

After reading the sections on this page, you should be able to:  

1. Identify and describe the three types of library databases. 

The best places to find articles for your research paper are library databases. Colleges and university libraries purchase subscriptions to these databases so that their students can use them for research. NOVA Libraries subscribe to over 200 databases. Most library databases contain articles from newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. Many also contain ebooks, video clips, audio clips, and images. Library databases may be divided broadly into single-subject and multi-subject. 

Single-subject databases tend to be not very broad but very deep. They cover one or a few subject areas, such as art, literature, science, or math. They tend to have many more publications in each subject area and many more years of content available in each publication. 

Examples of single-subject databases are Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints , which covers social issues, and ScienceDirect , which covers the sciences and engineering. 

Multi-subject databases tend to be very broad but not very deep. They cover all (or many) major subject areas but they tend to have fewer publications in each subject area and fewer years of content available in each publication. 

Examples of multi-subject databases are Academic Search Complete  (on the EBSCOhost platform) and ProQuest Research Library  (on the ProQuest platform).

Reference databases are a special type of library database that only contain reference ebooks. The sizes of reference databases vary depending on how many reference books (single-volume and mulit-volume sets) they contain. There are several different types of reference books, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases. Reference databases are useful when you're first starting your research, since you'll find introductory information on virtually any topic and definitions of specialized terms. Reference databases can be either single-subject or multi-subject. 

A list of all the reference databases to which the NOVA Libraries subscribe is located on the Biographies, Encyclopedias, Dictionaries  page.