Government Information/GIS Librarian Joy Suh talked to our class Tuesday night about different methods of research. Ms. Suh led us in a tutorial around George Mason University’s library webpage. She showed us various databases that are available for us students to use and how to effectively use the catalogue search feature.

Ms. Suh began by going through key databases in our library. She chose to discuss the most heavily used and informative databases that GMU has to offer. Anything from scholarly resources to legal documents to multimedia can be found in the databases Ms. Suh detailed.

Key Databases:

• ProQuest – archives of assorted mediums
• Academic Search Complete – scholarly / multi-disciplinary database
• Lexis-Nexis – legal and public records database
• JSTOR – scholarly journal database
• ARTstor – image-related database
• Social Explorer – census and demographic informational database

The next part of Ms. Suh’s presentation involved the library’s catalogue search. In the catalogue search, she explained how we could use the builder search mode and narrow our searches.

Catalogue Search Functions:

• AND – searches for multiple keywords at once
• OR – less specific and searches for either one keyword or the other
• NOT – more specific and searches for a specific keyword but not another

This discussion was extremely helpful, since I’m sure most of us didn’t know much about the catalogue’s more advanced features. In regards to my group’s project, the databases Ms. Suh outlined are going to greatly aid us in our research.