Library and Information Science

The Boolean Operators, And, Or and Not, are used to effectively execute searches in a database.   Here are some online guides on using Boolean Operators:

• You can access databases from the  Databases Finder Page.
• Select your subject interest or needed document type (e.g., Newspapers) 
• Choose a database from your subject area or document type.
• Databases are made up of records and fields
• A record represents the contains about one item.  That item could be a book, a book chapter, an article, a report or a web site.
• A field is the part of a record that contains information about one aspect of the item.  Some common fields are the title, author, abstract, publication date and subject or descriptor.
• The subject field is also known as the subject heading or descriptor field.  This field is made up of controlled vocabulary which are terms or phrases that have been selected to described the concepts covered in an item.
• Databases usually have unique controlled vocabulary.   Try to use each database's controlled vocabulary to efficiently access all of the available information on your topic.
• If the database that you are using does not have a thesaurus, examine the subject or descriptor field to determine the specific terms used by the database to cover your topic.
• Boolean Operators are used when you want to narrow or broaden the results of your search

Use databases to find articles on topics in library and information science.  The following is a selective list of databases that contain articles covering library and information science subjects. To access these resources, you need a SUNYcard issued by the University at Albany AND currently be affiliated with the University as faculty, staff or student. You will be prompted for your net id and password to access these resources.