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Searching PALS General Magazines Database The PALS General Magazines database indexes over 1,500 general magazine and scholarly journals. The database contains citation information to over 7.5 million magazine and journal articles. In addition to the 7.5 million citations, the database contains the full-text of over 1.5 million articles. The database also states when a PALS member library owns the printed copy of the magazine or journal. To access the PALS General Magazines database from the College Library Home Page click on the "Databases" link.
The databases are arranged by subject area. As the name implies, the PALS General Magazines database is broad in scope and includes resources from many subject disciplines, i.e., it is a general database. You click on the General link to get a list of the databases available.
Notice that there are instructions on how to access the databases from off campus. All but two of the library databases can be searched from off campus. To search the databases you must be a student, staff, or faculty member with a library barcode on your ID and a password. Your default password is your last name. You can also see a list of the print periodicals that the library owns. Use this list when the full-text of a periodical is not available in a database. If the library owns the print edition of a periodical you can come to the library and photocopy the article. Now look at the General Databases screen. We will click on the WebPALS General Magazines icon to access the database.
We now see the General Magazines database search screen. Notice that it looks identical to the PALS Library Catalog search screen. The only difference is the title at the top of the screen. Also notice the message at the bottom of the screen. PALS is informing us that it will only search for articles published in the last five years. If we want to search for articles published more than five years ago we must select the Advanced Search option.
We have entered the same search words here that we
were using in the Library Catalog lesson. Each word is truncated which
means that PALS will look for various forms of the word. We want to know if
there are any magazine or journal articles published on the ethics of the
genetic engineering of food. Pressing the
8 articles match our search. A number of the titles look like they might be appropriate. Notice that number 0004 has an asterisk (*) after the publication date. This asterisk informs us that the full-text of the article is in the database. Let's take a closer look at record number 0004.
There are a number of things about this record that we must understand. First, the Minneapolis Community & Technical College Library does not subscribe to the magazine in which this article is located. The way to determine whether the library does or does not subscribe to a periodical is by looking at the Location field. In this record it says: "LIBRARY does not own citation title." The citation title is the title of the magazine. It says "citation title" because the magazine title and publication information is located in the Citation field of the record. Look at the Citation field. This magazine article is from Science, Technology & Human Values, the Winter 1997 edition, volume 22, issue number 1, and it starts on page 98. The length of the article is located between the parenthesis ( ) at the end of the field. This magazine article is 27 pages long. If the library does subscribe to a periodical the Location field will appear something like the following two examples: Location: PERIODICAL 1989- Location: PERIODICAL Current 15 years The first example states that the library began purchasing the periodical in 1989 and continues to receive it. The second example states that the library keeps only the current 15 years of the periodical. To view the full-text of this article we would
press the
By the language used in the abstract it is clear that the article comes from a scholarly journal. The article presents information gathered from a number of surveys. We may decide that this article is not appropriate. But before we go back and view the other 8 articles in the results list we should take a look at the subject headings. Notice the subject heading Food--Biotechnology. This subject heading appears to describe our topic quite well. To search the database for other articles with this subject heading we click on the subject heading with the mouse. The following graphic shows us the results.
PALS located 25 articles that matched the subject heading search. Many of the first 11 articles shown here appear relevant to our research topic. Item number 0004 looks promising. Let's take a look.
This article looks like it might be of interest.
If we are searching in the MCTC library we could either go retrieve the print
copy of the periodical from the shelves, or press the
To print the article we simply press the
Item number 0011 in the results list also looks interesting and it is from the magazine Hastings Center Report. Let's take a look at item 0011.
This article comes from the July-August 1997 issue of Hastings Center Report and is 5 pages long. The library has subscribed to the Hastings Center Report since March/April 1994. This article is not available full-text in the database, so if we want to read the article we must go to the shelf and retrieve the magazine. This lesson demonstrates the power of subject heading searching. Once we locate a good subject heading, it will lead us to very relevant information which in turn will lead us to other information. Doing research is like detective work: we must always be open to clues that will lead us to further discoveries.
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gives us the following results:
button. Before viewing the article it would be wise to look at the
abstract, especially in a case such as this when the article is 27 pages long.
The abstract provides a concise summary of the article. The graphic below shows
the abstract of this magazine article.
button on the Web browser tool bar.
Now that you
have completed the WebPALS General Magazines lesson it is time for you to
attempt searching the General Magazines Database. Go to the
