LibGuides: Understanding ALS: Databases

How to use a database

Databases can be a great place to find all sorts of resources for any research project you do - books, reference book articles, magazine and newspaper articles, video, audio, statistics, and even recommended websites.

As you search in different databases, you may want to try different keywords, here are a few to use while searching:

ALS
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Lou Gehrig's disease

When you use a database you will probably need to narrow down your search to find materials that are relevant to your topic. Here are some limiting tips:

limit by publication type or name (for example, look for articles from the New York Times)
limit by date of publication. You are researching a current issue, so you probably don't want any materials that are more than 5-8 years old.
add search terms - the more terms in your search the more focused your search will be. Leave out words like the, and, a, if, is, to, an and so. These terms will be omitted from your search anyway.
If you want to look up a particular topic or person of more than one word, use quotes to make the database do a phrase search. "John F. Kennedy", "Civil Rights Movement"

Science in Context

Gale Science in Context This link opens in a new window
Gale Science In Context provides information on significant science topics and showcases how scientific disciplines relate to real-world issues ranging from bacteria to climate change and genetically modified organisms. Topics span the fields of biology, chemistry, earth and environmental science, health and medicine, and math and technology. The collection includes millions of full-text articles from academic periodicals and news sources, as well as over 200 experiments and projects, over 20,000 images, reference sources, and audio and video content from organizations such as NASA and Khan Academy.

Credo

Credo Source Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos. Links to other library online reference sites are included on the search results page and include Oxford University Press reference tools, links to our catalog, Britannica online, Salem History and many many more.