Research Database Searches: Ebrary, Safari

Research Database Searches: Ebrary, Safari Tech Online and Google Books

Research database searches: ebrary, Safari and Google Books

Database 1: ebrary

The home page for ebrary takes the web surfer to a general welcome page. The surfer must use the toolbar at the top of the page to select "Products and Services" for individuals, public libraries, or whatever designation is relevant to him or herself to begin searching different titles. Selecting 'individuals' will take the reader to a 'simple search' page, so he or she can begin browsing titles. I first typed in "qualitative research design," and retrieved 10,926 documents, the first of which was a qualitative study on tobacco use.

To refine my search and make it more pertinent to my interests, I checked a helpfully and automatically offered 'box' that I wished to limit my search solely to books on the topic of research. This limited my selection of books to 490 items. I was next offered further automatic limitations to refine my search. Some of the books retrieved were specific to the my area of study, while others were particular to research in fields not immediately germane to my area of interest, such as qualitative nursing research. Helpfully enough, one of the next offered limitations was for 'qualitative research.' I selected this ensure that the retrieved books were focused on this type of methodology. Finally, my search was limited to a manageable six terms, and although the database offered me the option of expanding my search terms, the six books offered by ebrary was sufficient.

The most helpful volume seemed to be the Handbook for synthesizing qualitative research by Margarete Sandelowski and Julie Barroso (Springer Publishing Company, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780826156945). This book was a general introduction on the topic of approaching qualitative research, rather than a specific presentation of how qualitative research was applied to a particular field.

Database 2: Safari Tech Online

I typed "quantitative research in education" into the Safari Tech Online database. Safari allows the web surfer to limit his or her initial search to books and DVDs, to so-called 'short cuts,' or to simply search the entire site. I opted for a general search. The array of books that was presented to me was classified according to subject matter, mostly concentrated in the field of computers. There were also some entrees on the subject of business management. The results were more appropriate for a computer class, but may reflect the database bias of Safari or the fact that I was searching a quantitative subject matter.

I next opted for Safari's advanced search option. Searching 'quantitative research in education' brought forth no results, much to my surprise. Typing in 'quantitative research' once again brought forth a number of technical subjects. Finally, I decided that the most feasible option was to type in 'education research,' given there seemed to be few books specifically related to education. I could then screen the books for titles related to quantitative research. A manageable 75 results were retrieved. These were fairly easy to screen for relevant content, because Safari helpfully offers a short excerpt from every book where search terms were located. I was drawn to a quotation on page 266 that read: "Quantitative details can hurt qualitative understanding" from the book by Ruth C. Clark and Ann Kwinn entitled the new virtual classroom: Evidence-based guidelines for synchronous e-Learning (Pfeiffer, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-787-98652-0). This book examined how quantitative research had been used to validate and refine different approaches to online education.

Database 3: Google Books

Of all of the three databases I used in this experiment, Google Books was the one with which I was most familiar. I typed 'mixed methods research' into the easily navigated search bar and Google offered me a helpful prompt for the phrase, even before I had finished all of the letters of the phrase. 20,900 books were retrieved by Google on mixed methods research, all of which seemed pertinent to my generalized search, and almost all of which offered a limited preview for me to view, as if I were in a real-life library.