Centerville: Accessing Databases

For help using LIRN databases, please use the following guide:

Accessing Databases

LIRN (Library and Information Resources Network) can be accessed on campus and at home by going to https://proxy.lirn.net/EducationAffiliates and logging in with your Fortis College student email credentials.

There are two different databases: ProQuest and Gale OneFile and within those two, many different collections. Hover your mouse over any of the collections for a short description on what information you can find.

ProQuest will show you what subjects are covered in their collections on the front page as shown below:

Key Terms:

• Scholarly: Written for people in a specific field BY people in that specific field. E.g. Journal for doctors with articles written by doctors.
• Trade/Professional: Written for people in a specific field but NOT written by people in that specific field. E.g. Journal for doctors with articles written by freelance writers.
• Peer-Reviewed: When an article (written by someone in the field) is reviewed by others in the field. E.g. An article written by a doctor which is then checked by other doctors for information accuracy and overall quality.
• Full-Text Search: When in a database, searching full-text will give you results of articles that are only available in full-text. If you don’t choose this, the results will include articles with abstracts (summaries) only and you have to pay for full-text. Selecting full-text prevents this annoyance while you are researching.

In databases (like ProQuest) shown above, there will be certain limiters or filters (show on the left side). You can limit it to:

• Full-Text only
• Peer-Reviewed articles
• The type of source (scholarly or trade)
• Can update the date range to obtain only current information
• Also the option to create a citation for an article

• There is also the option to limit what type of document you want (articles, case studies, etc.).

Note that in the articles, before you read the full article, you can click on the abstract/details which will tell you exactly what the article is about.

With all Gale OneFile collections, there is a topic finder tool that you can use to search for articles related to a specific topic. This is not available with ProQuest, only Gale OneFile.

With the topic finder, there is an option to choose wheel or tiles (which will change the visuals of the graph). Clicking on each section will show you how many articles are available on that topic (which will appear under the ‘results’ tab). This will also help you figure out what subjects to search, as the wheel (or tiles) will show you the subjects and words most often found for your topic.

In Gale OneFile, to limit to just peer-reviewed journals, you will need to conduct an advanced search:

To do an advanced search, simply type in your keyword (s), check documents with full text and peer-reviewed journals and then under ‘by publication date(s),’ you can choose a date range.