First Search is series of databases which include: a catalog of 38 million books, subject indexes of periodical and journal articles, abstracts of newspaper articles, an almanac and encyclopedia. Some databases include the full text of articles for immediate online viewing, printing or e-mail delivery.
General Databases
World Cat - Books and materials in libraries world wide
ArticleFirst - Index of articles from 12,500 journals
Book Review Digest - Cites and excerpts reviews of current English-language fiction and nonfiction books for adults and children. Includes only reviews that have appeared within 18 months of the book's publication. 1983 to present.
ECO - Full text of scholarly journal
Wilson Select Plus - Full text articles in science, humanities, and business
Specialized Databases
ERIC - Journal articles and reports in education
GPO - U.S. government publications
MEDLINE - Abstracted articles from medical journals
PapersFirst - An index of conference papers
Proceedings - An index of conference publications.
How do I know which database indexes a journal I am looking for?
If you want to find out what database indexes a particular journal you can find out from the First Search site.
Trinity does not subscribe to all of these databases, only to those listed above.
What is the "My account" feature?
This is a new feature offered by FirstSearch that allows you to save searches and track items ordered in FirstSearch through Interlibrary Loan. How to Create an Account
How can I use First Search for Electronic Interlibrary Loan?
How to Request Articles using FirstSearch
What are some helpful features of First Search?
Suggest best databases
This feature can help you determine how many hits you will get for your search term in each database based on the databases in a given subject area. You can use the results to search more than one database at once.
Search multiple databases To search multiple databases click on "Databases" on the blue navigation bar on the left side of the screen. List databases by subject area or list all databases. Put a checkmark in the box of all databases you want to search. Click on select. This will take you back to the search screen. The gray bar at the top will list the databases you selected.
Sort Function
You can now sort result sets of more than 2 items and less than 200 items. The results can be sorted in either ascending or descending order by Title, Author, or Date. If you search more than one database this feature will combine your results from the different databases.
View Previous Searches
Click in "Searching" on the blue navigation bar on the left side of the screen. This will highlight a white box with search options. The bottom one is "Previous Searches." When you click on this you can view all of the searches you have done in this session. You can use this to do the same searching another database or to combine searches in order to limit your results.
