Which Database?
A student sent in this great question, which is so obvious I’m sorry I didn’t think to put something on the blog already.
Hello there,
I want to research portable classrooms. I am interested in severe weather risks to children in portable classrooms vs conventionally built classrooms, terrorist/shooter risks, exposure to noxious chemicals from the building materials/molds of portable classrooms, effect on learning and test scores of portable classrooms, etc. What database(s) would you recommend I use?
Thank you.
The University of Iowa buys access to to several hundred databases and electronic resources in different areas. It can be pretty overwhelming to figure out where to start. Here are some suggestions.
- Ask a Librarian: This student did a smart thing asking for help. In this case, I would recommend the ERIC database, which covers journals in the field of education, and suggest using ERIC’s subject heading “Mobile Classrooms” to find articles about portable or temporary classrooms and combining that with subject headings like Hazardous Materials or Environmental Standards or School Safety or Weapons or Health Conditions or Academic Achievement, etc, depending on which aspect of the topic the student wants to focus on.
- Use the Resources by Subject pages: Rather than look through all of the databases we have available, let our Resources by Subject list guide you to the best resources in your area. The Education resource page lists ERIC along with several other education resources and describes them briefly so you’ll have a better idea about which to use first.
- Use SmartSearch: The Find Articles section of our Smart Search will let you search multiple databases at the same time. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to narrow your search down effectively while searching many resources at once, but you can do a simple search in SmartSearch to see which database covers your topic best and then do a better search in that database alone to narrow down to a reasonable list of good articles you can actually use.
There are lots of ways to figure out where to search in your area. Share your favorite databases and search strategies in the comments.
Dan the Librarian
