Searching Multiple databases
As part of a follow up to another question, a student asked…
“Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. You have been very helpful. One more. Is there a way to search all of the data bases together for one subject?”
Yes, you can use the Smartsearch, linked from the main library webpage, to search more more than one database at a time – http://smartsearch.uiowa.edu/. Smartsearch is pretty straightforward, but here are some tips to make it easier.
- Make sure the Find Articles tab is selected.
- Use the “limit to” feature to select a set of general databases or select one of the subject specific sets such as Health Sciences or Social Work.
- Perform your search in the basic search field or using the advanced search.
- Use SmartSearch to find databases that cover your topic, then do a better search in that individual database.
There are some disatvantages to using Smartsearch.
- Since it searches several database at one time, the system can take a while to work.
- Also, we buy access to databases from competing vendors and the Smartsearch system must work with all of them. Each database has it’s own way of working, but the Smartsearch system can’t take advantage of them. In effect, you are often doing the same bad search across many databases.
You can also find Smartsearch pages on many of our Resources by Subject pages – http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/eresources/refsubject.asp.
Have you used SmartSearch? Do you have any strategies that might help this student? Use comments to share your ideas.
Dan the Librarian
