- Search Tools
- Primary Searching Tools
- Keyword Searching
- Subject Searching
- Title Searching
- Author Searching
- Online Catalog
- Databases
- The Web
Databases, page 2 of 4
Citations
You have conducted a search, and you review the list of the retrieved citations. Although the format of the search results differs from database to database, the information content presented is usually the same. What can you learn from the citations list?
- the article's author
- the article's title
- title of the journal
- date of publication
- in some databases, whether or not the article is available in full text
The article may be relevant to our research project, but we cannot tell from only reading the citation. Therefore, we will need to read the abstract to determine if this article is applicable for our research project.
Abstracts
All of the subscription databases available through the Sawyer Library provide abstracts of the periodical articles indexed. Abstracts are brief summaries of the article's content. Reading the abstracts for relevancy to your topic before looking for the resource in the online catalog, or reading and/or printing the entire article (if the full text is available through the database) will save you time and improve your research process.
Is this a useful article for your research? If this is a useful article but not available in full text from the database, note the bibliographic information from the citation to help you locate this journal in the Sawyer Library, or another Boston-area library.
Determining type of periodical -- refereed, scholarly publication, or another (page 3 of 4)