Edwin H. Mookini Library

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Subject-Area Databases

Try related subjects - anthropology, biology, health sciences, history, psychology, sociology...

Select your campus and then explore the Databases - Subject Areas list.

Films On Demand: streaming educational videos in numerous subject areas, including Business, Health, Humanities, Maths, and Sciences - both Natural and Social. Ask your instructor if you can use a film clip as a source for your paper/project. (see links below)

Dissertations and Theses: great reference lists = lots of additional sources (see link below)

Films on Demand (Hawaiʻi CC access)
Provides educational videos in streaming video format. Searchable by title and segment. Each video has closed captioning and a transcript.

Films on Demand (UH Hilo access)
Provides educational videos in streaming video format. Searchable by title and segment. Each video has closed captioning and a transcript.

Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) (Licensed for UH Hilo users only)
Online access to full text of doctoral dissertations and graduate theses from universities around the world, including all campuses of the University of Hawaiʻi.

Why Not...?

Why not just use Google and Wikipedia for your academic research?

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and others don't see the "Invisible Web " which includes the databases that the library pays for - databases that have academically-reliable information, not just the invented stuff that's all too easy to find on the Internet.

The Why Not Wikipedia? page discusses some of the pros and cons of Wikipedia and how to use Wikipedia wisely.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar (GS) allows you to identify content available through our library subscriptions so you can be taken to the full-text if GS doesn't have the article but we do (links below).

CAUTION: GS doesn't "see" all the content that we have access to. You still have to also search the library's journal article databases.

Google Scholar (UH Hilo access)
Google search of scholarly articles, with a URL linker to Mookini Library databases enabled.

Google Scholar (Hawaiʻi CC access)
Google search of scholarly articles, with a URL linker to Mookini Library databases enabled.

Hawaiʻi Resources

Finding information specifically about Hawaiʻi can be difficult in the larger databases. Check out our Hawaiian Collection guide for other sources to try.

Government Documents

The U.S. government publishes useful material via the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and as a Federal Depository Library, the Mookini Library receives a small percentage of what is published. Print documents that have not been added to the General Collection are located on the Upper Level in the Government Documents collection.

Searching Tips

Unlike Google, library databases work best with keywords, not sentences, so instead of “How does nutrition impact a person’s health and weight?” use just the big idea words nutrition health weight in the search box.

  • Be aware of how the database is sorting the results - some sort by the newest, others by "relevance," which is defined differently by each database.
  • Phrase searching will keep two or more words together to create a concept:
    • “quantum theory”
    • “multiple personality”
    • “marine biology”
  • Do you need peer-reviewed sources? Many databases let you limit your search to retrieve only peer-reviewed articles.

Too many results? How to limit or narrow your search:

  • Does the database allow you to limit your search terms to only the title field to retrieve more relevant results?
  • Does the database allow you to limit your results to a certain geographic area?
  • Does the database have a standardized list of subject headings that are used to tag all books or articles that are on the same subject?
  • In JSTOR, if you are getting too many “Review [untitled]” results, you can use the Advanced Search to specify retrieval of only articles rather than those book reviews.

Too few results? How to expand or broaden your search:

  • Does the database have a standardized list of subject headings that are used to tag all books or articles that are on the same subject? This may show you alternate search terms to try.
  • Try synonyms - woman, women, feminine, female
  • Truncation is used to find variations of a word ending:
    • Hawai* {note only one i} will find Hawaii, Hawaiʻi, Hawaii's, Hawaiʻi's, Hawaiian, Hawaiians, Hawaiiana
    • navigat* will find navigate, navigating, navigation, navigators
  • Wildcards allow you to find variations within a word:
    • wom?n will find woman and women
    • organi?ation will find organization and organisation
Warning
Different databases use different symbols! You must check the Help area of each database to know what to use. For example, some use a ? for truncation and % for wildcard, while EBSCOhost uses a * for truncation and ? for wildcard.

Boolean Logic allows you to craft a more effective, efficient search to find books or articles on your topic faster. See our Advanced Search page to find out how Boolean logic operators AND, OR, and NOT can greatly improve your searching.

Book-a-Librarian Service

Did you know you can make an individual appointment with a librarian? Get help with finding and evaluating books, journal articles, and credible websites.