Orientation

ProQuest Direct & Ebscohost (Academic Search Elite)

The purpose of this page is to help the new user identify the utilities of the ProQuest Direct and Ebscohost databases and hopefully help orient them to the many useful nuances of these comprehensive research tools.

ProQuest Direct

 

 

 

 

 

Ebscohost

or

(Academic Search Elite)

 

 

 

 

What to Expect...

Lets enter our keyword water into the two databases and see what we get. Its possible that we may get the same records back from both, on the other hand we may end up with very useful information unique to each one.

 

First off look at how many entries we got back..

ProQuest:

Ebscohost:

Between the two of them we have over 800,000 items that may or may not prove valuable to our research. Thats more than any person could reasonably sift through, and odds are that only half will apply to our study so lets narrow the field a bit, and try the keywords water and law.

With the new keyword added lets see how many we got back now...

ProQuest:

Ebscohost:

Here you can that by adding a second keyword that applies to our research we can significantly reduce our results to a more manageable level.

Now that we've got our results narrowed down to a reasonable number, lets look at an individual item from each database. Like with the TESC Catalog we are given a link in the title that will take us to a page that gives either full text or an abstract. But unlike the TESC Catalog we are given much more information on default without having to switch to an extended display.

ProQuest:

Ebscohost:

With both we are give the title, author, journal or periodical title and publich date. As well as secondar links that will take us directly to the full text, or allow us to download a copy to our computers.

Keep your eye out for this link, this takes us to a .pdf file that can be downloaded, saved to disk or emailed.

Now that weve selected what articles we want to view we can check out the information and the options each databse provides as it pertains to our research.

ProQuest:

Ebscohost:

This information provides all the citation information we would need for our reference lists, and it provides the means to email, print, save or download the articles themselves. In some cases, like with our item from proquest only the abstract is available, but if you look har enough you will see a set of buttons like these:

These buttons search the WorldCat databases and the ILLiad databases for the full text of this article, in some cases there is even a link to the TESC Catalog which means that the Evergreen Library may have full text of that article available in their collection. Note that these transaction can take some time, so if your running low it may behoove you to bypass and find another article.

Also, keep your eye out for hyperlinks within the authors names on these pages. Those links will search the database for any of the authors other works that may exist in these collections.

 

Check Out the Ebscohost and ProQuest Limiters >>

Proquest l TESC Library Catalog l Ebscohost