How To Use The General Reference Center Gold Database

By: Whitney Niedzielski

Databases:

You can think of a database as an electronic filing system. When you are on a database website you can find data on a specific subject or keyword. You can also search things like publication titles and entire documents.

General Reference Center Gold Database:

When you are on this database website you can find data on a specific subject and keyword. You can also search things like publication titles and entire documents. From there you can choose documents with images, full text, or to peer-reviewed publications.

There are 71,349,360 articles on General Reference Center GOLD. This was updated on March 5, 2012. All articles have been published between 1980 and 2012.

How to get to this website:

Start by going to http://mel.orgo Which is Michigan’s eLibrary website.o The home screen should look like this!

Click: Click on the side link that say’s “MeL Databases”.

MeL Databases: After clicking of the home screen you will be

brought to a new page that looks like this…

Notice that all the databases are now in Alphabetical order and have a short description as to why you might use that database. It lists specific things to help you find out which one you are looking for.

Finding the Right Database:

When you get to this point you need to figure out what you are going to be looking for on a database. Once you have figured that out find the data base that applies the most to the topic, document or image you are looking for or would like to find.

Read this part to help you!

This is recommended for: colleges and universities.

Topic:

The topic we are going to use is Basketball and we are going to search it using the General Reference Center GOLD database.

Click on the blue title:General Reference Center GOLD

General Reference Center GOLD

Now you should be that the General Reference Center GOLD database site and it should look like this.

Searching Your Topic: We are going to be searching Basketball as a

subject. Click on subject. Then type it into the open space

Basketball: Basketball is a very broad topic so it is going to

bring up every magazine, article, book, academic journal, news story, video, and audio that has basketball in it.. You have a option to scroll through all of these and find something that is what you are looking for or you can click on just magazines, books, etc. (the number next to each one tells you how many it has).

You also have the option to narrow your search by clicking on one of the related subjects.

Images: We are going to click on the content type:

images, on the left hand side of the screen. From there it will bring

us to a page that looks very similar to the last one, but when you click on one of the individual results it will bring up an image.

You can go through and read each title and where the picture was posted like UPI Photo Collection.

Start clicking: Once you chose one that looks like it would be

good go ahead and click on it. I clicked on the one titled “Bulls Deng Shoots As Hawks Smith Defends In

Chicago”, but you can go to anyone.

Notice at the bottom a source citation is available if you chose to use it in you work.

If this is not what you want to find on a subject press the back button at the top left hand side of the screen and begin clicking on other ones. You may have to go to a different content type like books to find better information.

Pop Quiz !

Go back to the images page:

Can you find a picture with Carmelo Anthony in it ?

What team is he on in the picture?

Who is defending him?

Answers: You should have found a page that looks like this:

He plays for the New York Knicks. He is being defended by Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen

and Paul Pierce.

GOOD JOB!

Suggestions

This was just an example of a subject search done.

You can do this with any topic that you choose! You can find books to read, cool information

through audio, and many other things. I would begin experimenting with a topic and

discover all the different abilities these databases have in order to help you.

Have fun and become more familiar with you resources

available at MeL.org