Great question! Library databases are organized digital collections of online library resources, like newspaper, magazine and journal articles, trade and industry publications, corporate and government documents, white paper reports, and electronic books and media.
Library databases are like search engines, but they specially curate and organize their resources for college and university research, so they focus on sources from scholars and other professional writers and researchers. They also include advanced search tools specially designed for complex research, like keyword search, and publication date and discipline results filters.
You’re given a research assignment and your instructor wants you to find scholarly articles. They suggest you look at a library database. What do you do?! Where do you start?! This video will briefly describe how databases can make searching for scholarly sources easier on you as a researcher and provide useful tips and tricks on how to get the most out of a database.
Additional resources referenced in the video:
General Research Guide - libguides.marquette.edu/general
Contact a Librarian - marquette.edu/library/research/askus.php
All About FindIt@MU - youtu.be/A8XNPIbSEx8
RefWorks Citation Manager - libguides.marquette.edu/refworks
A quick overview of Findit@MU an app that helps you locate the full text of items across Marquette's many databases.