By Laura McGuiness<\/p>\n
Being an activist is hard work. You usually have people fighting you
\nand you’re most likely spending your life refuting these arguments
\n(hopefully with the proper evidence). Well, what if I told you that I
\ncould make these counter-arguments a little bit easier? Interested? You
\nshould be!<\/p>\n
The world needs to educate themselves further on their knowledge of
\ndatabases! By being able to successfully use a database and yield
\nresults, your life researching and developing counter-arguments will be
\nsimplified tenfold. There are a few tricks to manipulating databases,
\nhowever. But I’m here to make it seem easy!<\/p>\n
Let’s pick a topic to research. I became a vegetarian when I was 10 Which Database Do I Choose?<\/strong> The best advice I can give you for choosing a database is to look At the library I work at, we use something called \u201cEncore,\u201d but at my But since I mentioned Google as a database and it’s probably the most How Do I Use A Database?<\/strong> 1) Boolean Operators\u2014I love them!<\/p>\n \u2022Boolean Operators are essentially: OR, AND, and NOT. \n\u201c(vegetarianism OR veganism) AND iron\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This would bring up results containing either the keyword vegetarian or 2) Phrases\u2014Have fun with them! 3) Truncation\u2014Open up your world of search results. \n“veg* AND \u201ciron deficiency\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2022If I am looking for iron deficiency in women, I would want to see \n\u201ciron deficiency\u201d AND wom*n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 4) Fields\u2014Pay attention to them! 5) Stop words\u2014avoid them! \nUnder \u201cthe\u201d Skin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2022Using that as your searched topic will force the database to include So the next time you are doing a research project for school, trying to By Laura McGuiness Being an activist is hard work. You usually have people fighting you and you’re most likely spending your life refuting these arguments (hopefully with the proper evidence). Well, what if I told you that I could make these counter-arguments a little bit easier? Interested? You should be! The world needs to educate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5214"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5225,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5214\/revisions\/5225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nyears old and was diagnosed with low iron reserves a couple of years
\nlater. Throughout my life, people have been blaming my iron depletion on
\nthe vegetarianism. I, however, maintain that vegetarianism is not the
\nreason I suffer from this. If I want evidence supporting my decision, I
\nwill turn to my friend, the database…
\n
\nWhat Is A Database?<\/strong>
\nA database is just a collection of information that is organized in such
\na way to provide easy retrieval. You already know of a database, in fact
\nyou probably use one every day. Google. Google is just an agglomeration
\nof information, organized in such a way so when you type in a simple
\nsentence, it focuses on your keywords and retrieves information on those
\ntopics from the depths of its information collection.<\/p>\n
\nChoosing a database is the hardest part of researching. There are tens
\nof thousands of databases out there and each one has its own specialty.
\nThere are databases based completely on children’s novels, adult novels,
\npsychology, nutrition, or even automotive repair. There are databases
\nfor everything. Literally.<\/p>\n
\naround. Research databases. (After all, I’m sure they have a database
\nfor databases!) What I do is visit my university or public library
\nwebsite; usually somewhere they will have a list of databases broken up
\ninto categories so you can quickly and easily find what you’re looking for.<\/p>\n
\nuniversity (for my English classes at least) I would use \u201cLiterature
\nResource Center.\u201d For information on vegetarianism and nutrition,
\nhowever, I would probably choose the database, Medline. Medline was
\ncreated by the National Library of Medicine, so I think it’s safe to
\nsay, they would know a little bit about nutrition.<\/p>\n
\naccessible choice, that will be what I use in my examples. Although I
\nrecommend finding a database that specializes in one particular area,
\ngoogle serves its purpose \u2014 just be careful of what websites you pull your
\nevidence from. If the website doesn’t end in \u201c.org,\u201d \u201c.edu,\u201d or \u201c.gov,\u201d
\nthey’re really not a reliable source.<\/p>\n
\nI could write a hundred pages simply on how to effectively use a
\ndatabase. But for the sake of simplicity, I’ll limit it to five things
\nyou should know.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022You must capitalize boolean operators or databases will ignore the
\nrequest.
\n\u2022Most databases (including Google) automatically insert AND between
\nyour words.
\n\u2022You would use boolean operators to limit your search. That’s what you
\nwant to do in a database. This isn’t Ask Jeeves, where you type an
\nentire question, this is a database. You want keywords. If I am typing
\n\u201cvegetarianism AND iron\u201d. I will get articles, books, etc. with both of
\nthose keywords inside of them.
\n\u2022If I typed \u201cvegetarianism OR iron,\u201d I would get search results back
\nwith either the word \u201cvegetarianism\u201d or the word \u201ciron\u201d in it. That’s
\nnot what I want, however. By putting these search parameters into
\nGoogle, for instance, I got several websites that were talking about
\niron but not vegetarianism or vice versa. Since that’s not what I want
\nright now, I wouldn’t use the boolean operator \u201cOR.\u201d
\n\u2022If you want to exclude words from your search results, use the boolean
\nphrase, NOT. If I am looking for iron deficiency in vegetarian females
\nand not males, I would use the search terms, \u201cvegetarianism AND iron NOT
\nmales.\u201d This particular boolean phrase however does not seem to work
\nwith google, so I would limit this to other databases.
\n\u2022Using Boolean Operators requires some thinking, however. Databases
\nlook at your commands in the order you typed them, so if you are using a
\ncombination of AND and OR, you need to group the keywords together in a
\nphrase. This can be a little bit complicated, so look at my example and
\ntry it for yourself.<\/p>\n
\nvegan and iron. Since I knew that vegetarianism and veganism were a
\nconnected concept and I wanted to limit it to one or the other, I
\nincluded it there.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022Parentheses or quotes are used for phrasing. You already saw a bit of
\nthe phrase above with the boolean phrases when I used parentheses.
\nBasically, if you want to search a phrase instead of a single word, you
\nwould surround the adjacent words in either quotation marks or parentheses.
\n\u2022If I wanted to search not just about iron, but about iron deficiency,
\nI wouldn’t just put the word \u201ciron\u201d because that will produce results
\nranging from cases of freakishly high iron to cases of average levels to
\nexamples of extremely low iron. If what I am searching for is
\nspecifically iron deficiency, my phrase will be: vegetarianism AND \u201ciron
\ndeficiency.\u201d That will only yield results that include the phrase, \u201ciron
\ndeficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u2022Truncation is used with words that either have multiple endings
\n(vegan, vegetarian, vegetarianism, vegetables, veganism, etc.) or if I
\nwant to leave a single letter available for possible deviation (woman,
\nwomen).
\n\u2022If you want to find information on all word forms of vegan\/vegetarian,
\nyou would cut off the word at a spot that would allow for fluctuations
\nin the ending\/spelling.
\n\u2022There are multiple symbols used for truncation. Usually it’s an
\nasterisk (*), but it can also be an exclamation point (!), a question
\nmark (?), or a pound sign (#).
\n\u2022So, if I want to look up information about not just how vegetarianism
\nis linked to iron deficiency, but also how veganism, vegetarians, or
\nvegans relate to iron deficiency. I would type this in as my search:<\/p>\n
\nsearch results with both \u201cwoman\u201d and \u201cwomen\u201d present. In this case, I
\nwould use truncation for a single letter:<\/p>\n
\n\u2022Different databases offer a different number and selection of fields.
\nA few common ones would be: author, title, publisher, genre, and keyword.
\n\u2022These are usually located next to a drop-down menu of certain
\ndatabases. Obviously this is not part of Google’s search options, but if
\nyou’re using an academic database, these fields can help you find
\nextremely relevant results.
\n\u2022For instance, if I was looking up the book Under the Skin by Michel
\nFaber (an amazingly thought-provoking science fiction novel reversing
\nthe roles between humans and animals in slaughter houses), I would not
\ntype in \u201cMichel Faber\u201d as the title or publisher. Instead, listing him
\nas the author and Under the Skin as the title would be the best way to
\nfind the book I’m looking for. I can even go as far as listing that
\nbook’s genre as fiction and finding the publisher to narrow down my
\nsearch results even farther. If I couldn’t remember the exact title, but
\nremember it had something to do with the word \u201cskin,\u201d I would type
\n\u201cskin\u201d into the keyword field.
\n\u2022You don’t have to choose a search field. If you don’t, the database
\nwill assume the information you’re searching is a keyword, and usually
\nprovide too many results with not enough relevancy to the topic you are
\nresearching.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022Stop words include: a, an, the, in, of, on, are, be, if, into, which.
\n\u2022Most databases simply ignore these words because they are not relevant
\nto your search and are used too often. If they did take these words into
\naccount, you would be getting twice as many search results because any
\narticles including these stop words would be included.
\n\u2022Try not to use these! Instead rely on Boolean Operators and phrasing
\nto get your point across.
\n\u2022If your title or phrase has to include one or more of these words (if
\nyou don’t include them, it will come up with a completely different
\ntopic), use phrasing around the word.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cthe\u201d in your title and not give you a bunch of unnecessary results
\nwith variations of book titles including the words \u201cunder\u201d and \u201cskin.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nfind information on Google, or simply creating a refutable argument, use
\nthese database tips! If you would like to learn more about how to
\nsuccessfully operate databases, most university (and sometimes public)
\nlibraries offer simple classes and tutorials on the subject. Librarians
\nare also always there to help; if you ever want clarification or extra
\nhelp manipulating a database, ask a librarian! They have received
\nschooling in this topic and would be glad to pass on their knowledge to
\nthe public.<\/p>\n
\nLaura McGuiness wrote this piece while interning with The Vegetarian Resource Group. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"