Now let's go on how to choose the right source.
Best of all -
you are part of an institution,
like a university or some research institute
or something like that.
Most of these institutions subscribe to some databases - professional ones.
And the best of all is to go to your databases first.
Because they are paid, they are professional,
you will find most things there
and it's good to use it when it's already bought.
With us, you can access the databases quite easily.
Go to the library pages -
https://knihovna.tul.cz -
then catalog ... and database.
And here's just a list of the databases,
what the university subscribes to.
And just click on e.g. SAGE,
display full text
and it will redirect you.
But I have to point out one improvement,
that the gentlemen that administer
the database for us did.
If you click like this,
it will open this very nice window for you,
which has no functions, it´s just for viewing,
and there´s no Zotero.
So you click on the record
and here in the MARC, for example, here's the link.
Or you can fill it in manually.
You see, I normally have it open in my browser here
and I have Zotero here
and I can use it immediately.
So when you click on it
and you actually see the window,
that has no "back" and "home"
and no plug-ins and bookmarks,
then it was generated by Portaro.
And I don't know, we have to talk to them about it,
because it ties in to some other features etc.
So that's one way to get into the databases -
simply via catalog and choosing a database.
Or I'll go back to our library homepage
-> funds -> and databases.
And here it is ... I either click on it.
It redirects me to the database,
this time I have my window, which I like.
Or when I'm out of the university,
I use the institutional login.
And it'll show you a shibboleth screen.
And through shibboleth, you can actually access those databases from anywhere.
But it's somewhat austere here.
In the catalog you can see
what is in the database and how long we subscribe to it
and how long we will subscribe to it etc.
So either through the catalog or here through the funds
you can access all the databases that the university subscribes to.
And you'll start looking there.
The databases are specialized in something.
But as I said, the trend is now,
that the providers of the databases want to sell those databases,
so they are starting to multi-discipline them,
they put anything into them.
Like JSTOR,
that should be specialized in the things you see here,
literature and humanities,
but I found in it articles from engineering, economics and so on.
Somehow they just smuggled there.
So it's not a shame to just go there
and try to put your query in the database,
which is not entirely for the specific field of science.
So what do we have here?
EBSCO, those are just e-books.
We have IEEE for electrical engineers, engineering, JSTOR for humanities.
ProQuest is multidisciplinary.
SAGE is for material science, engineering.
But engineering is a very wide field
and there are also some things - for example economics can also be there, in SAGE.
ScienceDirect is a multidisciplinary database.
As I say, if you just search through all those databases,
then that is fine.
And maybe you just find things that you wouldn't otherwise find.
These are then multidisciplinary,
here are citation indexes to which I will return.
E.g. SpringerLink, it has the worst interface of all.
Let me show you.
Here is just a field, just like Google has it,
that's for the simple search as I said.
And when I choose advanced search here,
it shows some crazy table here,
which contains terms like "where the title contains"
and "where there is at least one word."
There's no abstract at all.
Yeah, there's a title here,
but it's just horrible to search in SpringerLink.
But there are some good things there,
that's why we subscribe to it.
He has good things but a bad interface.
Here I can show you another useful filter.
Some databases have the possibility to choose only the content,
to which I have access.
It resembles a bit the fulltext example,
but I can have some things in individual databases,
what are free on the Internet.
So when I mark off this, it's clear
that there are only things I can read right away.
If I unticked it, I would have a lot of results
but there can be something I don't have access to.
And if you ever find something in the database you want,
but the university doesn't have access to it,
then write to us and we will get it for you.
Be it a book, be it an article, be it whatever.
So, first of all, use the resources
that your institute is subscribing to,
sources of scientific texts your institute bought.
Another useful thing is to know
that public libraries also buy the databases.
We have ProQuest and regional library (KVKLI) has EBSCO.
This is ProQuest's biggest competitor,
also multidisciplinary and you can find a lot in there.
But, as I say, we don't buy it because the regional library has it.
So if you ever can't find something,
you can go to the regional library, make your own library card there
and because you are registered with them,
you can log into the databases they subscribe to for example from home.
That can also be quite interesting sometimes.
And when you go to Prague,
you can simply register with the National Library,
or better with the National Library of Technology
as they also have great databases.
So you go there only once,
you never have to go back there
and you are searching through their databases from home.
Which is nice as well.
And a lot ...
Well, the university has nice things,
but it has a limited budget
and can't buy all the databases.
And this is more or less free
- the registration costs a hundred crowns or two -
and you get access to these things.
So the second step of searching
or deciding what resources to use,
are the public libraries.
While we're talking about the public libraries, I'll show you this.
Knihovny.cz.
This is the unified portal of the central library system.
When you are registered in the library,
you can borrow a book from anywhere in the country.
So, I have bottles here,
I'll search it.
And now it shows me
where in the Czech Republic there are some things about the bottles.
And here I can - as I said about the databases,
this is essentially a database.
So it also has filters
and it also has ...
it also has advanced search, etc.
I click here and I see here
which library has it.
So when I find out that I might want it
and that our university library doesn't have it,
I just go here and say,
I'd like to borrow this one, get it for me.
And they'll just send it to me.
It costs is postage.
But the service itself is free.
And that service is legally provided by all libraries.
So you can actually have it sent to your place of residence.
And then you return it to the library that lent it to you.
Not that you yourself would have to send it back, to Prague for example.
It's also useful to know
when you know about a book you need,
and you can't get it.
Then you can find it here and see
if it is available somewhere in the Czech Republic.
Or, you don't have to search for anything and you just come straight to us
and say you just want this book.
And we'll do the search for you.
And we can borrow even from abroad, etc.
So that's one way to get to the resources.
Besides the libraries, the databases
that your parent organization subscribes to,
and besides public libraries
there are also resources that are free,
on the web. Freely available, without any payment.
The best way is to search via Google Scholar.
Google Scholar is good at
indexing almost everything. It has a tremendous search power,
but it doesn't have a great interface.
And because it indexes almost everything,
you'll find the most useful results in the paid databases anyway.
That's why you have to pay for these databases and that's why you buy them.
But it's always a good idea to look at Google.
Because it ...
it may happen that in that paid database
the thing is poorly indexed, it has poorly detailed metadata.
And Google just searches for it.
And he will offer it to you,
because in addition to the free ones he goes through the paid ones as well.
There I write this ...
I wonder if there is an article.
It shows me some 752 articles,
which is not so bad.
Here I uncheck that I do not want patents and citations.
Here you can actually browse through articles from the free web and so on.
When I do a search, I always go to the databases,
of course, about 95% of the results are from those paid things.
Then I always look at Google as it might suprise me with something
and sometimes it does surprises me.
I can also use Zotero with Google as well
but the metadata are not that good.
I download the first thing here, for example.
I'll give OK.
Now it will download the metadata that are actually in the Google index.
And here I can see what's there.
Okay, there's an article.
There's a title, there's an author,
but there is no additional information.
There is no abstract, there is no volume, and notjhing else.
In fact, Zotero is only dependent on
what the provider of the database or the website puts there.
It's not an intelligent system,
it doesn't open the metadata
and it doesn't arrange them into the collection.
So it always worth to ...
Yeah, ProQuest can do it; I know it's reliable.
But if it's a database I don't know,
or a website,
it's always good to look into it.
Check it
and either manually adding the things that are missing,
- and what sometimes happens is that the coding is wrong or something -
which is annoying.
You will generate the bibliography and then you will find out
that you there are some wrong signs there and you have to fix it.
So I just wanted to point out
that it takes a bit of vigilance with Zotero.
You cannot entirely rely on it.
But if I click it like that, for example,
- this is an article in the digital repository -
I'll use it again.
Zotero can then merge duplicates
in your bibliographies, etc.
And here, from that repository, it is a lot better.
You can find all the things here.
The abstact is here, which I find to be the most useful,
because then, actually, when you go through the search,
you can see if it suits you or not.
The year and issue of the journal are missing,
but maybe it came out on its own - an article.
This can then be written manually.
Or maybe it wasn't even an article, maybe it's a dissertation.
Zotero actually downloaded it as an article in this case.
Because it's probably not marked there as a dissertation.
So I can pick here manually
(muttering:it works that way ...
there is such work somewhere ...)
I don't see it now, but you can pick the kind of document here.
That's what Google Scholar is good for,
going through university repositories.
Which are, sometimes, interesting resources.
Of course, Microsoft has a competitor -
Microsoft Academic.
He's not as good as Google Scholar.
Mainly because he works in a different way.
Google Scholar uses its power.
It indexes everything and uses Boolean logic.
At Microsoft, they have the ambition to make it more contextual.
The crawler tries to somehow analyze the article
and understand it.
It is worse, mostly, but I had a few times ...
I had such an awfully difficult topic once
and Microsoft actually found something.
So like why ...
You can try it, you just copy it there.
Now it's good that you have the details ready.
So I'll just put it here.
It costs me almost no extra effort, actually, in my work.
And I let him show me some things related to the query.
It has some advanced features you can play with it.
Then there are databases that are completely freely available,
but those free databases are generally indexed
by Google Scholar or Microsoft Academic.
So it's e.g. MEDLINE, Eric or PNAS etc.
But you don't have to remember that,
because, as I say, you can find it through Google.
Or through ...
Even in paid databases there are things that are free.
Because the database is free,
so why would they not index it
while improving their profile at the same time.
So when you actually collect the resources you will use,
you have to remember
to go to the parent institution first.
Then there are some public libraries,
where you can also connect to these resources.
And finally, there is Google Scholar,
which is somewhat nice,
but definitely not suitable to use as the primary source of the search.
So it is all about the search in general.