Using EBSCO Databases

EBSCO has a new look and feel, featuring a cleaner and easier to use interface.

EBSCO is a database company, and our library subscribes to a lot of EBSCO databases, such as Academic Search Ultimate, Business Source Ultimate, etc.

Often, when using OneSearch, you'll click on a link that will take you into an EBSCO database to read an article. Or, if you use our library subject guides to find a specialized database in your subject area, that database could very well be from EBSCO.

This guide will show you how to navigate EBSCO databases and use their many features!

The middle of the EBSCO home screen is where you can enter a keyword search, as we've done below: "adult learners" AND perseverance. This screen also shows you which EBSCO database you're searching in. in this case, it's Academic Search Ultimate.

When you click Search, you'll see a results page, at the top of which are tools you can use to limit and focus your search.

For example, you can limit your search to full-text only, peer-reviewed only, by date, etc.

You can even activate natural language searching, which enables you to search in EBSCO like you would in Google: just type a normal sentence or question, and don't worry about Boolean operators!

Further down the results page are the articles that your search found in the database. This is what an article record looks like. It shows useful information, for example, that this article is peer-reviewed. The record also shows the article title, authors, and so on. There is a link to the PDF full text of the article, as well as a menu of tools in the upper right that includes sharing the article or generating a citation for it.

Also on the EBSCO homepage are useful ways to limit your search, for example, to full-text only, peer-reviewed only, etc. In rare cases, if you know the name of the journal in which you want to search, you can even type that in as a way to focus your results.

Below that are additional ways to limit your search: by date, publication type, and more:

Please note that you'll mostly be using the options under "Filters" to limit your search, but there are two other menus on the EBSCO homepage, "Search options" and "Subjects":

"Search options" lets you tailor your searches in certain ways, but it's fine to simply leave "Search options" with its default settings.

"Subjects" is a searchable list of the subject terms that EBSCO uses to classify and tag articles. It's rare that you'd use "Subjects," but sometimes it might be useful. For example, if you know that "business ethics" is a subject term in EBSCO databases, then you know it would be a good term to include in searches on that topic.

On the left of the EBSCO homepage is "My dashboard," which lets you personalize your EBSCO searching experience.

To use many of the dashboard features, be sure to first login to, or create, your free MyEBSCO account. You can do so in the upper-right of the EBSCO homepage:

You can use practically every feature of EBSCO databases without creating a MyEBSCO account.

But if you do sign up for one, you'll be able to use the dashboard to save and organize articles into Projects, access Saved articles, and use other helpful tools to personalize your research. And two tools you can use without logging into MyEBSCO are: Publication Finder, to see which journals are contained in the EBSCO databases; and Subjects Authority, a searchable list of subject headings used in EBSCO databases:

Just login to the new MyEBSCO using your existing username and password, and you'll see all your saved work under My Dashboard > Saved. 

(If you do not see it there, look under My Dashboard > Projects.)

Here's more info.

If you have questions about using EBSCO databases, feel free to contact us via Ask a Librarian!

You can also review these helpful EBSCO guides and tutorials:

• The New EBSCOhost Interface - Quick Start Guide - Searching, using the dashboard, etc.
• New EBSCO User Interface Tutorials
• EBSCO eBooks User Guide
• EBSCO eBooks and Flipster Tutorials