Database Coverage

Every database contains only certain types and amounts of information, which is known as coverage. This information can typically be found in the database under links such as "About [name of database]", "Database information", "Title list", or "Sources", etc.

Consider the following elements of database coverage:

What kind of documents?	Journals, magazines, books, book chapters, dissertations, audio files, statistical tables, images, Web pages, software applications?
Which subjects?	Sociology, music, chemistry, all, none?
What time periods?	The current year? 1960-1998? How often is the database updated? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annually?
What languages?	English only? Other languages?
Which publication types?	Scholarly? Popular? Trade? All three? Others?
What is included in the record?	A whole article or chapter (full-text) or just a brief description (bibliographic citation and abstract)? Publisher and title?
Not sure what database to use?	Look at the UTSA Subject Guides by Discipline.

Searching Sections

1. Searching
2. Databases

3. Database Coverage

4. Database Exercise
5. Records and Fields
6. Field Searching
7. Creating a Search Query
8. Search Query Exercise
9. UTSA Searching