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Library User Guide

The How-To's and FAQs for using the Amberton Library

eResource Instructions

HOW TO USE AMBERTON’S ONLINE DATABASES

 

Amberton provides students and faculty, on-campus and off-campus, access to various databases for research. These online databases offer indexes to citations of articles and books. The full-text of many (but not all) of these items can be viewed on-screen.

 

The database collection provides full-text and abstract access for over 300,000 scholarly publications covering academic areas of study including business, management, economics, finance, accounting, social sciences, psychology and behavioral sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, languages and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.

 

           EASY STEPS FOR SEARCHING DATABASES FOR SCHOLARLY or "PEER-REVIEWED" ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

 

  1. Go to the Amberton Library website: library.amberton.edu

 

  1. Locate the search boxes in the center of the very first page.  Choose one.  Type in a few keywords for your search.  Hit the enter key.

 

  1. On the Results page, look for checkboxes labeled "Full Text" and "Scholarly" or "Peer-Reviewed". Check them both.

 

  1. Just like a Google search, your best results appear at the top.  These results are also from professional, scholarly journals and have been fact-checked by experts ("peer reviewed").  Pick the ones that match what you are looking for, and find facts you want to include in your paper.
  1. If you use these facts in your paper, make sure to cite them.  There will be a CITE button near the Full Text and Scholarly buttons from earlier.

 

  1. Full Text articles sometimes provide a choice of HTML (read it on the screen like a webpage) or PDF (a readable scanned image of the article from the print journal).  You can choose either if both are available.

 

  1. Check our Guide to APA 7 for more info about citations, Reference Lists, and APA formatting of your paper.

 

  1. If you did not find what you wanted or needed, our A-Z List of Databases can help you choose a better group of journals to search for your topic or keyword.

 

 

USING BOOLEAN OPERATORS IN YOUR DATABASE SEARCHES

 

  • AND – combines terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, education and technology finds articles that contain both terms.

 

  • OR – combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, education or technology finds results that contain either term.

 

  • NOT – excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, education not technology finds results that contain the term “education” but not the term “technology.”

 

 

DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS

 

The Directory of Open Access Journals provides access to over 11,024 free, full-text, quality-controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Over 650 of these journals are currently searchable at article level, while the other can be accessed by the title of the journal.  This and many other databases are available in the A-Z Database listing on the website

 

 

ONLINE EBOOKS 

 

This general collection of more than 450,000 titles on many subjects can be searched by author, title, subject, or keyword. You can view full-text books as well as search the entire collection by keyword.

 

  1. Go to the Amberton Library website: library.amberton.edu

 

  1. Scroll down to the first set of boxes on the first page.  Locate the box in the top left corner.

 

  1. This box displays the three Ebook platforms that we utilize: Axis360, EBSCO, and ProQuest Ebooks.  Choose one.

 

  1. Enter a few keywords in the search box like a Google search.  Your results will appear ready to read on your device.

 

  1. There are some Ebooks available in our Library Catalog in addition to these three platforms.

 

  1. Contact the Library with any issues accessing or checking out any online resource, database, or title.