Electronic Databases

I have used the journal databases at UBC for the courses I have taken for my TL diploma, but I must admit that I generally use the same ones – either Academic Search Complete or ERIC, which both use the EBSCOHost platform for searching. They are fairly straightforward to use, giving a selection of articles that match your search terms. Using the subject words given, I can decide to click on the article to see the abstract or view the full text of the article. I have also used RefWorks to automatically generate reference lists using the database information. To further streamline a search there are many parameters you can use to limit the search. I am very comfortable using these databases and find them well organized and easy to use.

I thought I would try another database, though most of the ones I tried also seemed to be from EBSCOHost as well. The Ed/ITLib (Education & Information Technology Digital Library) was very different. It was basically like searching a website, but the search came up with papers matching the search terms. I could click the link to see the abstract and then had many options such as printing or emailing the abstract, getting a full text PDF, saving the article or exporting the citation. At this site, there is also the option of sharing the article on Twitter. There is information about the Journal the article is from, including the Table of Contents for that specific journal. There is a section titled “Also Read” which appears to be similar articles.

CBCA Education was from the ProQuest Database, which has a very similar interface to the EBSCOHost. The results list gives basic bibliographic information about the articles and options to see the abstract, text + graphics or full text PDF. An interesting tool here was the ability to translate the article to another language (also in EBSCO).

Education Index Full Text uses WilsonWeb which is also similar to the EBSCO and ProQuest format. I have used WilsonWeb in the past and found it also very straightforward to use.

In general, I think that the periodical indexes available at UBC are all similar. Once you are familiar with how to use one, the skill transfers to using the other indexes as well. Although I am most familiar with EBSCOHost, I would have no qualms about using any of the other indexes. The index chosen would be determined by the subject area I was looking for information on.