Library databases provide electronic access to articles published in periodicals.
Library databases are different from most search engines. How do they differ?
- The library pays to access these resources (that's why we log in through the library homepage)
- The way you enter search queries:
- Most library databases cannot parse natural language
- A natural language query is like asking your home assistant a complete question such as, "Hey robot, what's the weather today?"
- However, databases can help get you to specific content related to your topic!
- You can search by topic keywords, author, title, DOI, or other criteria
- You can easily limit/filter searches to get more relevant results
- The results that are returned:
- Are usually trustworthy
- Read more about evaluating authority, accuracy and other features on our library guide
- Are organized and easy to sort
- There are fewer overall results returned, but those returned will exclude more irrelevant results
- Make full text more easily accessible
- Can be limited to peer reviewed sources
