Virtual Library Overview

Available Databases 

The Virtual Library gives you access to many different databases, including:  

• The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library is a repository of resources to support computing research and practice.
• EBSCOhost Databases and Services: This includes access to Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, and other databases containing professional and academic journals.
• The Homeland Security Digital Library is the nation’s premier collection of documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management.
• IEEE Xplore contains books, conference papers, journals, magazines, and standards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
• Nexus Uni contains legal, regulatory, and business information.
• ProQuest Center includes scholarly journals, books, dissertations, and other publications on a wide range of topics. The ProQuest Center includes: 
  • • ProQuest Central: The largest single periodical resource with complete databases across all major subject areas.
    • Academic Complete: Provides authoritative, full-text e-books in a wide range of subject areas with powerful tools to find, use, and manage information.
    • Academic Video Online: Video material with curricular relevance, including documentaries, interviews, performances, and news programs.
    • ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The repository used by the Library of Congress to curate dissertations and theses. 
• Puente Library Online Catalog is a directory of in-person library resources. 

Guides and Resources 

• ProQuest LibGuides: Tutorials for search strategies and the ProQuest platform.
• Basic Ebscohost Search Tutorial Video 
• Advanced Ebscohost Search Tutorial Video
• IEEE Xplore Resources and Help 
• The Capitol Bookstore has the textbooks you need for your courses as well as a wide selection of Capitol merchandise. 

Boolean Search Terms 

Entering the right search terms can make or break the success of your search. Because these databases have so many resources, it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. This is where Boolean search terms come in. Boolean terms are operators that help organize and sift through resources. There are five key syntax elements you can use to make your database search more effective: 

• AND: Putting ‘AND’ between terms in your search will return results that include both terms. For example: ‘Washington AND president’ will return results about George Washington the president and will eliminate results about Washington the state or Washington D.C. 

• OR: The ‘OR’ operator lets you broaden your results to include either of the search terms listed. For example: ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle OR drones OR UAV’ would return resources that mention any of those three terms. This is best used when searching for synonymous or connected concepts and will give you more results overall. 

• NOT: Use ‘NOT’ to exclude words from your search. This will narrow your results. For example, searching ‘cloning NOT sheep’ will return results about cloning that are not specific to sheep experiments. 

• “”: Putting search terms in quotation marks will provide results containing the exact keyword or phrase within the quotation marks. 

• *: Use an asterick to provide search results for variations of a root word. For example, searching for ‘robot*’ will return results about robots, robotics, robotic animation, etc. 

The activity below shows Boolean search terms in action. When searching for “Washington”, you receive results on a wide range of topics. Select search terms to add to “Washington” to narrow your results, then click ‘Submit’ to see how the Boolean operator impacts the search results.