Online Searching Basics -
What is an Online Database, Anyway?
Put
simply,
Online:
Accessed via the Internet or the World Wide Web
+
Database:
A collection of information (text, graphics, sounds) that is organized in
some fashion
= Online Database
When you search an online database, you are connecting to another computer
system that is not part of the campus network. You are connecting via the
Internet. The "online" part of "online database" refers
to the fact that the information being accessed does not exist in a database
that is inside the computer you are using. The information exists elsewhere--or
"remotely"--on a "remote server" (like a giant hard drive)
owned by the database company.
Using your desktop computer, you can travel along the Internet to the server,
and access the information (articles, pictures, etc.) stored in the database
server. The information travels back to you, and is displayed on your computer
monitor. You can usually save the information, ("download it to disk",
or print it out), but the information is actually owned by the database
producer, or "vendor", from which Gutman Library purchases the rights
to access the information.
The Internet is a "client-server
system". The servers store and distribute the
information and the clients access the information. Your desktop
computer is the client, the tool we use to connect to and "talk" to the
databases.
Gutman Library has access to several database systems. Some of these systems
consist of full-text articles from magazines, journals, newspapers, annual
reports of companies, and from trade publications like Computer Shopper
and Women's Wear Daily.
Some full-text databases also include the graphics (drawings, photographs,
charts, tables) that are in the original printed articles. Other databases are
"text-only". Still other databases do
not include the whole article, just the citation information or the
citation and an abstract (summary) of the article. These
databases--usually containing specialized information--are "not
full-text", but "bibliographic". They provide you
with the information you would use in your Bibliography, and sometimes
also with an abstract.
