This page contains tips on how to use some of the college’s databases to find articles on Tap Water. In addition, the best databases to use for the research assignments are listed here.
Accessing the Databases: Access the databases though the CCC Library's Articles: Research Databases page.
When you are off-campus, you will need to use your student ID# and the same password you use for your Canvas, email, My Portal, etc.
As you learned in the Research Databases Basic Instruction page, generating a list of Keywords is an important starting point. Remember that Keywords are important when conducting a natural language search. Following are a few Keywords to get you started:
"Tap water"
"ground water"
aquifer
pollution
lead
arsenic
standards
This list is not nearly complete. Think about what other words you might try.
Remember that subject terms are a set vocabulary so not all words and terms will be subject terms. After you conduct a keyword search, you will see the subject terms (sometimes hyperlinked) within the detailed record. You can simply click on the linked subject term to conduct a search. You can also combine a subject term search with a keyword search.
Here are some known subject terms that could be helpful with your research:
"DRINKING water"
"WATER chemistry"
"Groundwater monitoring"
"Water quality"
When you conduct a subject search from a link, you will notice there is a capitalized DE in front of the search. This instructs the database to retrieve resources that have been tagged with the subject search. Here is how it would look in the search bar:
DE "DRINKING water"
As you learned in the Research Databases Basic Instruction page, in EBSCOhost, you can search multiple databases at once. For this search, the following databases are recommended: Academic Search Ultimate, Environment Complete, GreenFILE, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, Science & Technology Collection, Science Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson)
Once you have your databases selected, start a keyword search. Don't forget to use your Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) you can try:
"tap water" AND standards
After you conduct your search, be sure to filter the results using the facets on the left side of the screen. Remember you can filter for "peer reviewed" articles and you can filter the date range. For this search, you may want to filter to a geographic region. To do that, scroll all the way down and click the arrow down button on the facet "Geography" and select: united states.
Finally, don't forget to try a Subject Search, by clicking the links you find!
Science in Context is a topically organized database. There are two topics that will be very helpful in conducting research on the topic of tap water.
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For this assignment, we're recommending the following databases as being the best places to find resources on your topics.
EBSCOhost Databases
The following databased can be found in EBSCOhost, and you can search all of these databases at once. If you are unfamiliar with how to do that, go back to the Research Databases Basic Instruction page, and in the How to Search Box, review the Search Multiple EBSCO Databases tab.
