By Andrea Hernandez
College students can find essay information and can also do casual research on the East Los Angeles College Library online article databases. Students can use these databases to get information from legitimate sources. Search engines such as Google are not legitimate sources.
“I used to rely on Google for all my assignments, only squeaking by the minimum requirements. I think it was an English 101 class that taught me about ELAC’s sizable electronic resources. JSTOR, ProQuest, and EBSCO, among others, changed the way I viewed my assignments,” Laura Hernandez, an ELAC student, said.
Many students do not realize how helpful ELAC’s online databases are until they give it a try. By using the databases, students like Hernandez do not have to struggle to find information.
ELAC’s databases are free and easy to use. “Instead of dreading the inevitable annotated bibliography, I began to actually enjoy using these very specific search engines just to see what would turn up.” Hernandez said.
The differences between using any regular search engine and ELAC’s databases are outstanding. Information is filtered and students can find the exact articles they need. For students that are new to the databases, they see it as an excellent learning experience and it prepares them for success.
“What I learned overall is that the results are guaranteed to be at least a little academic. I don’t have to worry about breaching pay walls (illegally, if I am desperate) to access a source I need. And it’s just really cool,” Hernandez said.
Library databases contain free scholarly articles 24/7 that students can access on or off campus. To access the databases off campus, a student must login with their student identification number and password. If a student is accessing the database on campus, they do not need to use their ID login details.
To access the database list, students must go to the ELAC website front page and then click on the library box with a picture of the library first, then click on find articles, next click on databases to get to the list. A student can find scholarly articles and newspaper articles on topics such as arts, humanities, and social sciences with the many databases that are available on the list.
Some databases are: The Streaming video academic database which could be used to find films about topics on demand. Country watch is a database that has articles on the world countries similar to an encyclopedia.
The gender watch database contains articles on topics such as women’s health and gender identity. Artstor is a database that could be used for finding artwork from various painting artists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
When searching for articles about a topic, students must be sure to spell the topic correctly because the database will not auto correct the way Google does. Key words can also be used to search for articles for more search results. Each article on the databases contains an abstract, which is a brief summary that says what information an article contains.
There is an option to send an article to a personal e-mail so that students could read it later. There is also a citation option for each of the articles on the databases to help cite the article correctly. These articles could be downloaded to a computer or fully printed. Some articles are not available on the ELAC databases.
There is a link to access them which is called full text finder. The library has a 24/7 chat option for students who need help finding articles. Students can also call the South Gate library at (323) 357-6214 or the ELAC main campus library at (323) 415-4134 to get help finding articles on the databases from a librarian.
