Welcome
Disclaimers:
If your professor is requiring you to take Library Research Skills Workshops, or giving extra credit, this LibGuide does not replace a Library Skills Research Workshop, and your professor will not be notified. You must attend an actual workshop to meet your professor's expectations.
If your professor has included a module in your Canvas classroom on this topic, this LibGuide does not replace that module. You will need to complete the module in Canvas, as it has a quiz at the end, which this LibGuide does not.
This guide will help you understand:
- How to access databases
- How databases work
- Tips to improve your database searching
- EBSCOhost basics
- Other databases
Each tab in this guide corresponds to one of the bullet points above.
What is a Periodical?
A periodical is a publication that is produced with a particular frequency, such as a newspaper (daily), or a magazine or journal (weekly, monthly, quarterly). Periodicals consist primarily of articles.
What is a periodical database?
A periodical database is a searchable collection of reliable, vetted (already evaluated or fact-checked) articles. The BC Library pays for subscription access to these resources. Periodical databases are to articles what Netflix is to music!
While the Bakersfield College Library subscribes to approximately 150 periodicals in print form, this small collection isn’t adequate to meet the research needs of most BC students. So the library subscribes to many additional periodical databases such as EBSCO Academic Search Complete and Gale Academic One File. These alone offer access to approximately 6,700 additional periodicals in electronic form.
