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BUS 457: Dataset Searching

A guide to finding datasets for coursework in BUS 457: Business Research Methods II

Oregon Tech Library Search Bar for Datasets

Library Search Bar Demo Video

(also see the bottom of this page for a tip not shown in the video!)

OT Library Search Bar Tips

Go to the library homepage at oit.edu/library and run a basic search. Be sure to sign in from the search results page (if prompted by the yellow bar) to see your full list of results. 

On the results page, under Resource Type, click Show More.

Under Resource Type, several types of resources in your results set are shown. Click Show more to look for Datasets.

Click Datasets where it appears in the list. If it does not appear, it means your search did not find any datasets, so try some different keywords.

The word Datasets appears among the list of resource types found by the search.

Under Availability, you can use the Open Access filter to see only datasets marked as Open Access. Note: his may cause your set to lose some results that may be free online but are not marked Open Access in the library records.

 

Tips Not in the Video

Click Remember all filters on the search results page so you do not have to keep clicking Datasets under Resource Type after each search you run! Remember all filters appears under the Active Filters header at the top left of the screen.
Remember all filters appears under the Active Filters header at the top left of the screen.

 

Assignment Prompt 2

In the fillable assignment document that you downloaded, complete the activities under Oregon Tech Library Search for Datasets, Prompt 2. 

If you don't yet have your fillable assignment, open the Searching for Datasets:Assignment Questions document, go to File -> Download, and download a copy in .docx format. 

 

AND, OR and NOT will make your searches great

Tired of reading? scroll to the bottom of this page to watch a video instead!

Before you're ready to enter your keywords into the Oregon Tech Library, take a moment to learn about the operators AND, OR, and NOT. These are sometimes called Boolean logic operators.

Don't worry! It's not as scary as it sounds. Boolean operators are used between two or more keywords to complete the phrase “I want records that contain _____”. 

•AND – both terms are required to appear in a record.

Example: I want records about how secondhand smoke affects people with asthma, so I want records that contain secondhand smoke AND asthma

•OR – at least one term is required to appear in a record.

OR is useful to account for multiple synonyms, acronyms, word variations, plurals, and verb conjugates

Example 1: I want records about patient education, but there are many synonyms for the word education in this context. That means I want records that contain education OR counseling OR teaching OR motivational interviewing.

Example 2: I want records related to preeclampsia, but there is another way to spell this word: pre-eclampsia. Therefore, I want records that contain preeclampsia OR pre-eclampsia.

•NOT – the term following “NOT” must be absent from a record in order for it to be returned by the search
Example: I want records about the nursing profession, but I'm getting too many results about nursing mothers. To subtract those records from my results, I want records that contain nursing NOT mothers.

The quick way to remember this is that synonyms/related terms should be combined with OR. Different concepts should be separated with AND. For example:

Autism OR autistic OR ASD
AND
Young adult OR young adults OR adolescent or teenager or teenaged or “high school”
AND
Speech generation OR speech generating
AND
ASL OR sign language
 
Use the advanced search form of the Oregon Tech Library's search bar by clicking "more search options" next to the bar on the library homepage.
Click "more search options" below the search bar on the library homepage to get to advanced search.
 
From the Advanced Search Form, you choose to organize these strings and connect them with AND operators to make sure at least one word from each concept is found in every result returned by the search. The AND operators are already chosen for you - you don't have to do anything to select them! Just paste your ORed keyword synonyms into each box.
 
The Advanced Search Bar allows you to enter ORed strings of synonyms into each search box.
 
See how we're using the search boxes to combine each string together using the AND operator into one big search?
Practical tip: In your real search, don't combine too many concepts together. In reality, you should try 2 or 3 concepts to start, and then add concepts in to narrow your search further with each try. (Running the search shown above returns 0 results!)
Watch this video to learn about Boolean operators!