Welcome to the Business Source Premier tutorial By the end of this tutorial you should be able to: Do a basic search to find references Use search techniques.

Welcome to the Business Source Premier

tutorial

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to:

• Do a basic search to find references • Use search techniques to make your results more relevant • Email, print or save your results

Step 1: Accessing Business Source Premier

Go to the student home page and login with the student login ID and password

NB: Staff would log in at Staff Homepage, and select Resources Online.

Select Resources Online from the list of applications

Select E-Resources

Select your subject (e.g. Business & Management) and then select ‘Find Resources’

Now select Business Source Premier from the list

NB: When staff click through to the Index, they will be asked for their Athens account details before entering the database.

You now have two options:

(1) EBSCOhost Web will take you to all EBSCO databases. (2) Business Searching Interface will take you to a specific interface designed by EBSCO for business researchers.

You can access Business Source Premier through either link but, for the purposes of this guide, we’ll try out the Business Searching Interface – select this link and you will now be in the database.

Step 2: Search strategy Before you start searching any database you should plan your search strategy in advance as itis a more efficient way of managing your time.

Keywords Before you start searching, think about keywordsfor your given subject.

If your topic is: Discuss the security issues caused by online banking.

Your keywords would be: online banking security

TIP: Authors use many different terms which mean the same thing. Remember, the computerwill only search for what you tell it to search for. If there are other words that mean the same (or similar) things as your search terms you must search for these too. Think about alternatives(and the different types of security issues that you know online banking may cause).

For online banking you might search for: online banking internet banking electronic banking

For security issues you might use: security fraud data protection

TIP ON FINDING KEYWORDS: You may find it useful to do some preliminary reading in textbooks and encyclopaedias which will help you identify some keywords, and perhaps also key authors.

You will automatically be taken to the Basic Search screen. This screen is very useful for searching for and browsing company profiles, country reports etc, but to find journal articles on a subject it is usually more helpful to use the Advanced Search. So from here you select Advanced Search.

In the search box type online banking and select search. Make a note of the number of results your search finds.

Your search results should look similar to this - you should find that you have over 9000 results.

Step 3: Broadening your search

• The term or will broaden a search and include items where the authors have used different terms.

• Example:

online banking or internet banking

In the first search box type online banking or internet banking.

Click on search and make a note of the number of results you get.

Items containing either search term have now been searched for and your search results list will have now have increased to over 17000.You can add more alternative words if you want to widen your search more e.g. online banking or internet banking or electronic banking

Step 4: Combining your search terms

• Searching for online banking or internet banking will give you everything the database has on online banking and internet banking (security issues, marketing of, success, etc).

• You therefore need to be more specific about the subject you are looking for. To do this you can combine different search terms together.

• The term and will narrow your search

Search for online banking or internet banking and security. Make a note of the number of results you get.

You have now searched for items containing either online banking or internet banking, as well as security. Using ‘and’ will usually result in fewer but more relevant hits.

Have a look at the result numbers you wrote down and see how the number of results changed. You should now only have around 4700 articles. (This is clearly still too many articles but is a great improvement on 17000!)

Step 5: Refining your search

• When you have entered all the search terms you want to use you will still often need to cut down on the amount of results you have.

• To refine your search you might want to:– Remove articles which do not have the full text available in BSP – Remove articles that are not in peer-reviewed (scholarly)

journals– Remove all the older articles or select a range of years– Refine by specific document types e.g. article, company report

• TIP: It is usually best to refine your search by selecting one criteria at a time. Selecting multiple criteria can sometimes mean you get no results.

To refine your search select ‘Refine search’ (this is located to the left of the screen)

This screen below shows how to refine your results by searching only in the abstract (the brief summary of the article); by full text results only and by peer-reviewed scholarly journals only.

(There are also ‘More options’ lower down the screen that you can select to refine the search further)

To help you decide which articles are relevant to you look at the citation and abstract. Do this by clicking on the title of the article. You will be given all the information about the article. This will include the title, authors, journal name, year, volume, issue etc. For most articles you will also be able to read an abstract, a summary of what the article is about.

If you can access the full text of the article you will see a PDF Full Text or a HTML Full text link. TIP: If you click on pdf you will get a document that looks identical to the original print version, including any pictures, graphs etc. These can be slow to load. If you click on html you will get just the words of the article with no pictures.

Step 6: Reading your articles

You can print, save or email one or more articles. To print, save or email an individual article open up the article. Click on the appropriate link on the top of the page

Step 7: Printing, saving and emailing your results

If you want to print, save or email multiple articles use the folder. Go to your list of results. Click on Add for each of the articles you want to email, save or print.

When you have selected everything you want click on Folder

Tick the articles you wish to print, save or email. Click on the appropriate option at the top of the page and follow the instructions.

To see your search history and to save any searches go back to your results list (if you are in the Folder, click Back to view your results list). Click on Search History/Alerts. You can view, print, re-run and save your searches.

Step 8: Search histories and saving your searches

Congratulations – you’ve come to the end of this tutorial

If you need more advice about constructing your search, such as choosing keywords, or how to

combine searches, or if you have any other related queries, please contact ALT staff.

We hope you enjoyed the tutorial