Library Research Skills: Periodical Databases: EBSCOhost

To review: in order to access this database, go to the A-Z Databases list on the Library webpage.  Find Academic Search Complete in the Popular Databases column on the right.  Click the link to get to the database search page.

In the search boxes at the top of the page enter the keywords or phrases you would like to search. EBSCO will then search for these words or phrases in the titles or summaries (abstracts) of articles in the database. Words entered in one box will be searched as a phrase, so common phrases such as “global warming” or “medical marijuana” will work in one box. However, don’t enter words like “children advertising” since this isn’t a logical phrase. Those are distinct concepts and words you would want to enter in separate boxes.

For example, if you want to perform a search on the idea of fast food advertising to children, you could enter “fast food” in the first box, leave the “and” operator in the dropdown box beneath it, enter “advertis*” in the second box (truncated so as to retrieve advertise, advertising, advertisement), leave the “and” operator in the dropdown box, and then enter “child*” in the third box (truncated to retrieve child, child’s, children, children’s).

To increase your results, you could even use “or” operators in your search. Remember that the “or” operator is always used between similar concepts or synonyms. To do this, enter the word “or” between the similar concepts in one box.  For example, in the first box you could enter “fast food or junk food.” EBSCO sees the “or” as an operator, searches on the concepts on either side of it separately, and retrieves any article that has either concept.  Or you could enter in the third box (child* or youth) [See ①below].

When you’re comfortable with the search terms in the boxes, perform the search by clicking the green SEARCH button [See ② below].

You can build a list of articles that interest you by clicking on the blue folder with a plus sign on it, which is found to the right of each article [See ⑦ above]. 

Each article you tag will be added to your folder. Near the top right of the screen, you will see “Folder has items” where your articles can be found. You can also look at the blue ribbon at the top right of the screen to find a folder icon and the world “Folder.” To see all the articles, click on “Folder View” or click on the folder. You can save, email, or print the contents of the folder.

The folder will remain only during your search session. After a few minutes of session inactivity, the folder will be purged.  To keep the contents of a folder, you’ll need to first create an EBSCOhost account.  Click on the “Sign In” link at the top right side of the screen and follow the instructions to create a My EBSCOhost account.  It’s free and the username and password can be anything you want them to be -- no need to use your BC email address or ID number.  Once you have an account, sign in to My EBSCOhost, begin your searching, and as you add items to your folder, they will remain there until you delete them or until 18 months have passed, whichever comes first. 

The search result is a list of articles that meets your search criteria. One of the first steps you may want to take, depending on how many articles are retrieved, is to limit your results using the "Refine Results" bar on the left side of the screen. For those who must use scholarly, peer-reviewed sources, check the box next to “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed Journal)” and only scholarly articles will be left in the result list [See ③ above].  

If you need articles from within a particular timeframe, you can adjust the publication dates using the blue date slider bar on the left side of the screen [See ⑤ above].

By default, the articles sort in relevance order, meaning the articles that are most closely related to your topic are at the top of the list. Notice that you can change that by using a dropdown menu just above the list of articles and to the right side (by default, it’s labeled “relevance”). You can re-sort the list by publication date, author, or the periodical (source) in which it appears [See ④ above].  

If you’re unable to determine what an article is about by looking at the title, put your cursor over the icon of a page with a magnifying glass that you find to the right of every article. A pop-up window will open that will include an abstract. This will give you a summary of the content of the article [See ⑥ above].  

Clicking on the title of an article will take you to a screen that includes complete citation information and an abstract. Citation information is the article title (in bold), author(s), periodical the article appeared in (Source), date of publication, and page numbers. 

Using the permalink icon on the right edge of the screen, you can create a permalink.  Copy and paste the permalink into any Word or Google doc.  Clicking the link will take you directly to that article in the database.

The article will either appear in the webpage below the citation and abstract (HTML Full-Text), or you can click the “PDF Full-Text” link in the upper left navigation bar for a view of the article as it appeared in the original publication.

When reading a PDF version of the article you can take notes from it (always noting the citation information for future reference), save it to you device or flash drive using the download icon at the top of th PDF window, print it using the printer icon in the PDF window, or email it to yourself using the small envelope icon in the right navigation bar.  

Below the citation information are subject terms.  These indicate what the article is about and are just like the subject headings added to library books.  They are hyperlinked, so that by clicking on a subject term you will be taken to all articles in the database that are tagged with that subject heading. This is an ideal way to find additional related articles once you find the correct subject term.