Digital Databases and Indexes

Google

Google is one of the most powerful search engines on the Internet, and if used properly it can be an excellent academic research tool for students.

Started by two Stanford University graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, from a garage in Menlo Park in the fall of 1998, Google quickly grew into the most used site index in the world, indexing over four billion internet pages, and returning over a hundred million search queries per day. As its name suggests, the Google search engine has the power to return a seemingly infinite number hits for just about any query, although still far from a googol. This success, however, is also its barrier for the student who needs to sift out the most reliable and pertinent information.

Often Google is the first place students go to search for information about a subject, and for good reason, but there are far more powerful ways to conduct a query than simply entering a term into the search box and hitting the "Google Search" button. Here are some general search tips and subject-specific search tools that will help the student develop the fine art of Googling to find the most relevant and authoritative information faster. Although the below techniques are discussed separately, they are often best used in combination.

General Search Tips

1. Google is not case sensitive and automatically searches for internet pages that contain all search terms in the query, so there is no need to use the Boolean operator "and" between terms. The order of the terms, however, is important. Type the most important term first to maximize results or type a more specific term first to limit results. For example, the query 'china and buddhism' and 'china buddhism' will return the same results, where as the search query 'china buddhism' and 'buddhism china' will return different results.

2. Since Google automatically searches for all terms in the query, regardless of their position in relation to each other on any given page, it is often more useful to conduct a phrase search by putting quotation marks around two or more terms, which will limit results to instances where the search terms appear in the exact order typed. The querry 'chinese buddhism' will find instances of both terms "chinese" and "buddhism" on the same web page, while "chinese buddhism" will find only instances where the two terms are used as a phrase and in that order.

3. Google automatically excludes common words like "where" and "how," so if you want to include a common word in your search add a plus sign (+) in front of the term. Common terms will also be included in a phrase search (see above).

3. Use a minus sign (-) before a search term to exclude the term from your query. For example, if you want to conduct a search about the Chinese Diaspora in Asia, but the query "chinese diaspora" returns pages dealing with Chinese Americans, try excluding the term "America" from the search by typing: '"chinese diaspora" –america.'

For more basic Goodle search tips, click here.

Google Advanced Search Tips

To conduct an Advanced Search in Google, click on the Advanced Search link to the far right of the Google search box for several powerful search limiters and expanders. Some particularly useful ones include:

1. Limit your search to pages within a specific web domain. For example, you want to find how to request a transcript from Friends World, but there is no search field in the website. Just enter the Friends World URL in the "Domain" field of the Advanced Search page and select "Only" and type 'transcript request' in the "Find results with all the words" field. The first hit returned is the Friends World Transcript Request Form download in PDF. You may also limit your query the same way in a Google basic search by typing: 'transcript request site:www.brooklyn.liu.edu/fw/' to search for all instances of the terms "transcript" and "request" on any one page in the Friends World site. Try just typing '.edu' in the "Domain" field to limit your query to university sites or '.gov' to limit your query to official U.S. government sites or '.gov.cn' to limit your query to official Chinese government sites.

2. Search for any term and its related words by typing a tilde (~) before the term. For example, the query 'china ~politics' would search for the terms "China," "politics" and related terms such as "government," and "political."

3. Limit your search by date by adding a time range after the search term. For example, if you want to conduct a search for information regarding Chinese religion during the Republic period (1911-1949), type the query: 'china religion 1911..1949' to return all instances of the terms "China" and "religion" with references to dates within the range of 1911 to 1949.

4. Try limiting the search by language. For example, if you want to search for a transliterated Chinese proper name, but do not want results from Chinese language websites, limit the search under "Language, Return pages in" by selecting "English." Alternatively, select "Chinese (Simplified)" or "Chinese (Traditional)" to search for the transliterated Chinese term on Chinese language pages in mainland China or in Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively. It can be particularly helpful to conduct a Google searche using Chinese characters and limit the search to English pages to see how the Chinese term is glossed in the English language.

5. Once you find a useful webpage related to your research subject, enter that URL into the Page-Specific Search, such as "Find pages similar to the page" or "Find pages that link to the page," to find related sites. You can also conduct these searches in a Google basic search field by typing 'related:' or 'link:' in front of the website URL, respectively.

Google offers several Topic-Specific Searches, two of which are particularly relevant to undergraduate research abroad, as they provide access to full-text academic resources, although both are still in their beta phase of development.

Google Book Search

Google has partnered with several academic libraries, including University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, The New York Public Library, and Oxford University, to include their collections in Google Book Search to function like a card catalog, returning a snippet of the book with your query in context. However, Google has also digitized numerous books in the public domain that can be read online cover to cover. Because most libraries and publishers only provide Google with limited previews of current publications, most of the full view books digitized by Google directly have become part of the public domain due to expired copyright (copyright in the United States expires 70 years after the death of the author), making this an excellent means for finding historical publications, especially those published prior to 1923. Google will highlight all instances of your query within the book, but you will be unable to copy text directly or download the file. Here are some search tips:

1. To search Google Books, go to the Google homepage, click on "more," above the upper right corner of the search box, and then click on Book Search. Then click on Advanced Book Search for more search options.

2. Check the radio button for "Search full view books" to limit your search to only books that have been digitized in entirety or check "Search all books" to expand the returns to include those books that offer only a limited preview.

3. Try using the table of contents link or the index link for a particular book to browse related subjects within the text, and then enter the corresponding page number in the page field to jump directly to that page.

4. Use the "Search within this book" field to continue your search for specific terms within the book.

5. When you have found an interesting book, click "About this Book" for a synopsis of the text and relevant bibliographic information.

6. If your instructor has requested your bibliography to include works published by an academic press or works published in the last ten years, for example, you can easily limit your search by typing 'university' in the "Publisher" field and the appropriate date range in the "Publication Date" field. Note that not all academic publishers contain the term university in their name, and limiting your search to recent publications works best if you do not limit your search to full view books.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides access to a broad range of full-text online scholarly literature in numerous disciplines, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic and university publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, and other scholarly organizations.

1. To search Google Scholar, go to the Google homepage, click on "more," above the upper right corner of the search box, and then click on Scholar. Then click on Advanced Scholar Search for more search options.

2. Under "Subject Area" check the radio button "Return only articles in the following subject areas:" and check the box for "Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities."

3. If you want returns published only after a certain date, enter only that date in the first box of the "Date" field and leave the second box blank.

For more Google advanced search tips, click here.
For the Google advanced search Cheat Sheet, click here.

China Center Databases

Questia
The China Center subscribes to Questia, available from the China Center computers only. Questia allows unlimited access to an on-line library with over 65,000 full-text scholarly books, both current and out of print, from over 250 publishers, and over one-million journal, magazine and newspaper articles selected by librarians for undergraduate research in the humanities and social sciences. Students can add mark-up to text, including highlights, notes and bookmarks, and students can add books to a project file to organize sources for each paper subject and to generate a bibliography automatically. Students can also select a passage and use the citation tool, which can automatically format in our preferred style, the Chicago Manual of Style One, and insert the formatted citation directly into a Microsoft Word file. Individual pages from any title can be copied or printed, but the complete work may not be downloaded.

Search Tips: Try searching within a text for specific terms and phrases.

Guru Net
Our Questia subscription also allows access to Guru Net, installed locally on each computer, which is an on-line encyclopedia and dictionary. Try
Alt + click on any word for instant access to The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition.

Long Island University Databases

Your enrollment at Long Island University entitles you access to numerous digital databases and indexes, both general and subject specific, with remote access to full-text resources.

Try accessing these on-line databases from these Long Island University Libraries:

Brooklyn Campus
C.W. Post

You will need a 14-digit library Borrower Barcode available from your Faculty Adviser. When you click on one of the remote access databases listed on the above sites, you will be prompted to enter this barcode before conducting a search. You will need to re-enter the code each time you change databases.

Some important general databases with which you should become familiar early in the semester include:

JSTOR
The Scholarly Journal Archive (JSTOR) maintains long runs of backfiles to numerous academic journals with complete full-text files available for download in high-resolution Adobe PDF. The LIU subscription to JSTOR provides access to 307 academic journals in twenty-four disciplines, including twelve Asian Studies journals, such as the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, the Journal of Asian Studies and three journals specific to China, some dating as far back as 1843 and current to within two years of the current issue.

Search Tips: Click "Expand Journal Titles" and display search results by highest scoring items first, most recently published items first, or oldest items first. Click on Citation/Abstract for easy-to-copy bibliographic citation of article and to read the abstract of articles. Click on "Article name" to view full text from the first page or click "Page of first match" to find the first hit for your search term. Click on Download to save article in PDF format on your local drive.

Expanded Academic ASAP
Expanded Academic ASAP includes more than 3,500 indexed and over 1,000 full-text popular and academic journal and magazine titles, including 2,100 peer-reviewed journals, with over twelve million articles in all disciplines dating back to 1980. Full-text articles can be easily copied in simple text format, printed from the browser reformatted with full-size graphics, or downloaded in Adobe PDF.

Search tips: Try limiting a search to "Articles with text" to find only full text articles. PDF icon indicates full-text download is available. Click on Title to highlight your search term within the text. Scroll to view other articles related to the search.

ProQuest Research Library
The ProQuest Research Library database includes over 3,800 popular and academic journal, magazine and newspaper titles in 150 core academic subject areas, with over 2,500 full-text titles and with backfiles starting from 1972 and some current.

Search tips: Limit your search to "Full text documents only" and "Scholarly journals, including peer-reviewed." Click on Abstract to read a full-text abstract of the article to see if the search result is of interest before clicking either the page icon to read and/or copy a simple-text version of the article or the Adobe icon to view and/or download an image version of the article. Click More Search Opens and check the Book Reviews box under Exclude from Results to exclude review articles.

Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier provides access to over 4,650 serials dating back to 1975, including over 3,600 peer-reviewed journals in nearly all academic disciplines. Backfiles dating back to 1975 or further are available for over 100 journals, with the majority of titles in native (searchable) PDF, and searchable cited references are available for more than 1,000 titles.

Search tips: Academic Search Premier provides a very complete advanced search options for limiters and expanders, including limits to full-text and scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles, document type (ranging from book reviews to recipes) and publication type. The Cited References tab allows searches for citations of a particular author or title, which provides a very useful tool for students to find related sources.

Ebrary
Ebrary, like Questia, provides access to full-text books and includes a user account that allows students to store text markup, including highlights and notes, and to copy and print text with automatic citations that include a URL hyperlink back to the source. Although substantially smaller holdings, the LIU subscription to the Academic Complete collection currently contains over 25,000 e-books from 180 publishers, many of which are not in the Questia database, making this a very valuable resource for students. Note that to view holdings in Ebrary, you must first download and install the Ebrary Reader plug-in for your browser.

Search tips: Try clicking on the Browse button to display the twenty subject categories. Each subcategory indicates the number of titles in parenthesis. Navigate to an appropriate level of specificity and then click on the subject heading you are interested in to display all the results. For example, the category History (General) contains 1194 titles, with 390 titles in the Asia subcategory and 67 titles in the subsequent subcategory for China.

Gale Virtual Reference Library
The Gale Virtual Reference Library subscription through LIU provides access to 224 encyclopedias and dictionaries in seventeen subject categories. For Asian religions we highly recommend the Encyclopedia of Buddhism (New York: Macmillan, 2003), edited by Professor Robert Buswell in two volumes, and the Encyclopedia of religion (Detroit: Macmillan, 2005), edited by Lindsay Jones in no less than fifteen volumes. Articles are available in simple text and for download in Adobe PDF and include linked entries and index.

General Search Tips

Search for Chinese terms under both of these two Romanization systems: Hanyu Pinyin Romanization system, a Chinese alphabetic system promulgated in 1958 that has become the United Nations Standard since 1977, and the Wade-Giles Romanization system, first published in 1859 by Thomas Francis Wade and later modified by Herbert Allen Giles in 1912. This system was formerly the Romanization system of choice in most English-speaking countries and remains the official system in Taiwan for personal names and is still used by older generations of Sinologists, and is easy to recognize by use of hyphens and the apostrophe. A search for a Chinese proper name using one system will result in one set of results that may exclude results using the other system of Romanization.

To convert single-word terms between these Romanization systems, try this on-line Java applet from Mandarin Tools. Alternatively, try using the on-line Wade-Giles to Pinyin table here and the Pinyin to Wade-Giles table here.

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