Introduction    A wide range of information is available in electronic forms: databases, e-journals and e-books. These resources provide access to index, abstract and full-text articles of renowed publishers and of those available freely on the Internet. These materials can not be used for any commercial purposes.  Click on E-resources, choose one of the following resources to display:       Databases E-journals   E-books  Browse a database, an E-journal or an E-book by title (A-Z) or search this resource by title or subject.   Access Access within Hue LRC: You are allowed to access only in Hue LRC campus. If you want to access outside Hue LRC, please contact Information desk for more information.  Contact information desk: to get the username and password to login. Free access: Access is available freely both in and outside Hue LRC.

When you select a database, you will need to consider the following • The subjects included on the database • The time period covered • The type of publications indexed (theses, journals, magazines etc). Here is a comparison chart between three databases:   DATABASE  AGRICOLA BioMed Central  Pandora Archive Subjects covered Agriculture, Biology, Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Food science, Environmental science, Geospatial science Biology, Biotechnology, Complementary medicine, Health., Medicine, Nursing Multi-disciplinary Type of publications indexed Journals, books, av Journals Journals, reports, websites Geographic Coverage International International Australia Date range covered 1970- 2000- 1966- Database Searching Skills    To obtain the best results from a database search, you need to prepare a search strategy before you begin searching. The below steps will help you turn your assignment or research topic into a search statement that the computerised database can understand.  Step1:  Summarise The Topic What do you want to find information on?  Clarify and summarise your search topic as precisely as possible. For example, I want to find information on the effects of exam stress on University students. Step 2.  Identify The Main Concepts Once you have identified what information you wish to locate, highlight the key concepts within your search topic. For example, information on the effects of exam stress on university students. Step 3.  Select The Terms List all of the terms which may be used to refer to your concepts.  Search terms may be single words or short phrases.  Aspects to consider when selecting terms include:  Find possible synonyms or related terms, e.g. stress or anxiety  If a thesaurus exists for the database, consult it to find appropriate descriptors or subject headings  Use truncation for variant forms of the term e.g. exam/examinations. Truncation is a useful technique to widen a search that has variant forms of a search term. The truncation symbols vary according to the database you are using, but mostly are * and ?. If you type in the stem and the truncation symbol, you will retrieve all the variant endings. This technique can also be used for U.S. or British spelling. E.g.  exam* will find exam, exams, examinations etc. or behavio*r will find behavior or behaviour.  You may find the below table a useful guide to completing this process:  Concept One Concept Two Concept Three University or College Stress or Anxiety Exam or Test  Step 4.  Combine the terms You will need to use special "connectors" or "operators" to tell the database how to combine your search terms. These special "connectors" are called boolean operators. There are three boolean operators: and, or, not.  the one you choose depends on the results you wish to retrieve from your search.      OR retrieves all records that contain one or both terms.   AND retrieves all records that contain both terms   NOT eliminates a term      If we build the concepts together with Boolean Operators, our search statement becomes: (University or college) and (stress or anxiety) and (exam* or test*) (Here we have also used truncation (*) to pick up variant endings). If you use more than one Boolean Operator in a search statement, you need to use parentheses to group terms - sometimes this is called "nesting". If you do not use parentheses, the computer will process the terms joined with "and" first. Using parentheses forces the computer to search for the words in parentheses first.

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