Prince George's Community College

301 Largo Road
Largo, Maryland 20774

Introduction

Online databases are organized collections of computerized information or data such as periodical articles, books, graphics and multimedia that can be searched to retrieve information. Databases can be general or subject oriented with bibliographic citations, abstracts, and or full text. The sources indexed may be written by scholars, professionals or generalists. Online databases that are retrieved on the World Wide Web are generally non-fee based, lack in-depth indexing, and do not index proprietary resources. Subscription or commercial databases are more refined with various types of indexing features, searching capabilities, and help guides.

Prince George's Community College's Library provides commercial databases for its users as well as non-fee databases. These databases are available from the Library's Web site. To review these databases, click on Online Databases.

In this module, you will learn about strategies for selecting, searching, and using databases to gather materials to begin your research on: What is the relationship between United States intelligence operations and counter terrorism? This section will focus on:

• Selecting the appropriate databases
• Search strategies for using online databases
• Searching InfoTrac Web
• Searching ProQuest
• Searching Literature Resource Center