1- T. Wasserman- Database Assign.- Spr 09/ILS 504- Prof. OkobiTerry WassermanDatabase Searching AssignmentSpr 09 ILS 50422 February 2009Professor Okobi
2- T. Wasserman- Database Assign.- Spr 09/ILS 504- Prof. OkobiFor this assignment we were asked to go through this tutorial and then answer the
following questions as fully as possible, using examples.1.What is a database?A database is an organized collection of related records that is stored digitally. It isarranged in a structured order for ease and speed of search. An example would be theLibrary Literature Database on the New York Public Library website which “Indexes periodicals and books, reports, pamphlets, and library school theses on all aspects of library and information science” from 1984 to the present.2.When you conduct a search for a specific title or author what type of search areyou conducting?Field searching allows the researcher to select a specific portion of the electronicrecord to search, be that title, author, publication year, etc. If someone were lookingfor articles by John Updike, the searcher could simply type “Updike, John” into theauthor field to search for all articles contained in the database written by JohnUpdike.3.What are basic search techniques?The first basic principle of conducting a search is to choose appropriate keywords,using a thesaurus if deemed necessary. In choosing keywords the researcher shouldconsider variant word forms, differing spellings and related words. Keywords can be
3- T. Wasserman- Database Assign.- Spr 09/ILS 504- Prof. Okobicombined or limited using the Boolean operators: AND, OR and NOT to further limitor broaden a search. In addition, if the search engine allows wild card characters, aword can be truncated allowing all possible suffixes, adjectival forms, etc. of a wordto be included in the search (Marlborough, 2007).4.List some advanced search techniques.In order to conduct a more specific search, field searching is recommended. Thiswould mean searching such particular fields as Author, Title, Year of Publication,Language, etc. for precise keywords. Thus a researcher could input “1999” in theyear of publication field to find documents published in that year or “French” in thelanguage field to find documents written in French or “small” in the title field to find books with the word small in the title.In addition to the basic search techniques, on some interfaces a proximity operator,like “with, “adjacent” or “near,” can be used to further limit or expand search potentials.In a complex search, parentheses may be necessary in order to use more than oneBoolean search operator. If one was searching for recipes for a vanilla cake, onecould try the search “vanilla and (cake OR pudding)” as pudding is a British term for cake.Some databases use controlled terms or subjects, so that all related articles can befound under a particular subject heading, this functions much like the Library of Congress subject heading system in that one must learn the terminology of thedatabase to know which heading a specific topic would fall under. Checking the
of 00
Database Searching Assignment
299 Reads
Info and Rating
| Category: | Uncategorized. |
| Rating: | |
| Upload Date: | 05/05/2009 |
| Copyright: | Attribution Non-commercial |
| Tags: |
Leave a Comment