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What is  ?
NC Live (North Carolina Libraries in Virtual Education) is a gateway to a variety of information resources that is much larger and much more informative than what you'll find in your average Google search. The backbone of NCLIVE is a series of article databases. Each one of these databases contains links to hundreds of thousands of articles from thousands of respected newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals. These articles provide information on current events, business, health, education, psychology and many other topics.
NCLIVE databases minimize the time you spend sorting through Google or Yahoo searches, trying to decide which (if any) of the sites are relevant to your search. They also eliminate the time spent worrying over whether an Internet site you've found is full of truthful information or is being completely made up by a crackpot in a basement. (Of course, you may find the occasional crackpot at a respected newspaper, but your teacher won't be as hard on you if you quote them.)
In addition to several of these databases, NCLIVE also gives you access to thousands of books and encyclopedias. These books are filled with information that will help you with your class assignments and are every bit as good as the books in our library.
Using the EZ Search Feature in
The easiest way to find information on a specific topic in NCLIVE is to use EZ Search. You'll find the EZ Search box on the front page of NCLIVE.Simply type in your keywords and click on the "Search" button. You can also select whether you want to search based on an exact phrase by selecting the appropriate button under the search box. (EZ Search does NOT search EVERY database in NCLIVE, but does search the 30 most popular ones.)
It is also important to narrow your topic as much as you can when using EZ Search. For example: Let's say that I'm interested in finding information on state lotteries. So, I type "state lotteries" into the EZSearch box.
As you can see from the above picture, there are several databases within NCLIVE that have articles related to state lotteries. The Proquest database alone has 2,838 articles. The other databases have approximately 2,000 articles each. That's going to be a lot to search through.
At this point, it is important to narrow your topic. We know that you're interested in doing a paper about state lotteries. But what about state lotteries? Their history? The controversy about them? Are you doing an argumentative essay? It is important to have the focus of your topic as clear as possible before conducting an EZ Search.
Let's assume that you're doing a paper about the benefits of a state lottery. You can go to EZ Search, and type in "state lottery benefits."
What a difference! ProQuest has dropped from 2,838 articles to 260. The other databases have 95 articles or less. At this point, you could further refine your search. If your interest is North Carolina, you could try "North Carolina state lottery benefits." But, for now, let's leave our search terms alone and take a look at our results page. As you can see from the picture above, each EZ Search results page is divided into five sections: All Records Found; Limit to; Database; Description; and More Info. Let's look at these individually.
All Records Found: This is the total number of articles within each database that relate to your topic. In Proquest's case, there are 260 articles...
Limit to: ...but not all articles are in full-text. That means that not all articles are available for you to read in their entirety on your computer. Some articles only have citations and abstracts. That means that they only tell you what the article is about, and the publication where the article appeared. If you only want to see articles that have full-text, click the Full-text link next to the database of your choice.
(By the way, if you see an article that only has the citation and abstract, and you think the article would be useful, contact a librarian and we'll do our best to get it for you.)
Database: NCLIVE is a collection of dozens of databases that differ from and complement each other. In our example, we are looking at the database called Proquest. Once you've done your EZ Search, you may not be sure which database you should choose. It will probably help you to take a look at the Description section.
Description: Each database will have a short description explaining the types of materials that are in the database. For Proquest, the description reads: "Newspapers, magazines and journals covering many topics, including business." For some databases, the Description may be too vague.
More Info: The "More Info" link opens a box that will tell you more about each database and what it does. This additional information will give you a better idea of where to start with your searches. Of course, if the first databse you choose doesn't have the information you need, you can always go back to your EZ Search results page, and choose a different one.
Now that you know how the EZ Search function works, click here to find out how to use the individual databases within NCLIVE.
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