Opposing Viewpoints Resource Centre

If you haven't tried out this new Database you should.

Opposing Viewpoints covers over 9,000 pro and con topics through providing a variety of reference materials, commentaries and viewpoints, periodical and news articles, primary sources, statistics and multimedia. Useful for essay writing, researching a report or term paper, preparing for a debate, or for being better informed. It's a great resource for students.

Subject searches can be narrowed down to Academic Journals, Magazines, Multimedia, News, Primary Sources, Reference, Statistics, Viewpoints & Websites. Plus you can narrow the results down to content level - basic, intermediate & advanced - great for different academic levels.

Tip - If you search your subject under Subject Guide Search it produces lists which breakdown the content and subject matter and shows the number of hits per category so you can refine your search to the relevant aspects of the topic.

You can also search via publication.

Play with it - it's great for students!

Ebsco Host2.0 -- Did you know...

EbscoHost's recent 2.0 release contains four new enhancements: new search modes, article and image preview via mouseover, new results list, and enhanced preferences options.

1. New Search Modes
The new search modes feature is found under the 'Search Options' on the basic and advanced search screens. The search modes are as follows

• Boolean/Phrase
• Find all of my search terms
• Find any of my search terms
• SmartText Searching
  

'SmartText searching' is the most novel of these enhancements, and the only one that is not self-explanatory. It allows the user to enter a large piece of text, or an entire page. SmartText searching examines the text and places a weight on the search terms and returns a result list based on relevancy.

2. New Results List
The new results list has the following features:

• 'Narrow your results'. Options to narrow results appear on the left hand side of the page. Results can be narrowed by 'source type' as well as by subject, by clicking on source type or subject heading links.
  
• 'Limit your results.' Options to limit results appear on the right hand side of the page. Check-boxes allow you to limit results to full text, or to articles from academic (peer reviewed) journals. A slide bar allows limiting search by date.
  
• 'Related information'. To the right of the results, just below the 'limit your results' section, is a 'related information' area where you can find images related to your search, as well as links to information in newspapers via 'Newsbank', web news and blogs.
  

3. Article and image preview via mouseover
Images related to articles can be previewed by holding the mouse over them; article citations and text can be previewed by holding the mouse over the magnifying glass icon next to article titles.

4. Enhanced preferences option
Search history/alerts are now available under the 'find' field. Your search history from the current session will be displayed. From here you can print your search history, retrieve your previous searches, retrieve alerts, and save articles and alerts. You also can combine searches and add them to the 'find' field by marking the check boxes next to the searches you would like to run and click the 'add' button. In addition, from the Preferences page (link is under the 'find' field) you can print, email and save your articles as well as customize options such as page layout, language, result list display and citation format. These preferences can be saved for futures sessions by signing into your MYEbscoHost folder.

Ebscohost Novelist -- did you know....

Those of you who have searched Novelist recently will have noticed the web site has been redesigned. The main change is that the keyword search box (augmented with limiter check-boxes) has been made more prominent, available now on the homepage at the top of the screen; and the advanced search feature has more limiters than it used to. The changes to the search interface are detailed in the Quick Start Guide in the ‘Spotlight’ section of the homepage. In addition, the ‘Training’ link has been augmented with a series of help sheets which also are linked in the Spotlight section.

Search tip depending on the kind of reading recommendation you are seeking, running a keyword search can be more effective than using the browse function. For example, the most effective way to find a list of murder mysteries set in a castle is to run a keyword search using the terms ‘castle’ and ‘mystery’ (with the appropriate audience limiter box checked). Terms are automatically truncated (so that castle finds castles as well) and joined by the Boolean operator ‘and’.