How to get the best from the British Education
Index: five top tips
Introduction
This video will show you five top tips to get the best from the British Education Index. The BEI is an essential resource when you want to find high quality journal articles on your topic. It contains many links direct to the full text versions of articles.
To access BEI you will need to login to Cardiff Portal, click on the Library tab, then click Databases. Select B from the A-Z menu. Then select British Education Index, you will be taken directly to the database page.
As well as BEI there are two other education databases you can search at the same time if you choose. These are ERIC and AEI, which focus on US and Australian resources. You can search one or all of these three databases by selecting your preference from the dropdown menu in the top left hand corner.
Tip one: Get your search terms right
Successful searching is a result of careful planning. Before you start your search on BEI take some time to think about your topic. Note as many words, which relate to your topic as possible, you could use a thesaurus to help you. This will help you remember which search terms you need to try to ensure you don’t miss any important articles.
Tip two: Use double quotation marks and the asterisk
As you enter your search terms, include any exact terms in double quotation marks. BEI will automatically search for plural versions of your search terms, if they are not in double quotation marks.
If you want to cover all possible endings to your search term, replace the letters at the end of the word stem with an asterisk.
In this example the search will retrieve results that contain the phrase “educational attainment.” The search will also retrieve articles with the full range of endings to inequality including: inequality and inequalities.
Tip three: Focus your search terms.
A useful feature of BEI is that you can limit your search by education level. In this example the search is limited to results relevant to ‘secondary education.’ Just select the tick box next to the range you require.
You can also limit your search by date, just select the date range from the dropdown menu: for example the ‘last three years’ or if you require a more ‘specific date range’ click on this option and input your own search dates.
Tip four: Access the full text.
Click on the check for full text button. Look out for the full text available link which will take you directly to the whole article so you can read it online or download it to read later. If there is no full text link, click on the LibrarySearch option to see if the print journal is available in the libraries.
If the resource is not an article, always check the detailed record as there may be a full text link here.
Tip five: keep a note of your search results
To help you keep track of the information you find on the British Education Index, email them to yourself. Just click on the tick boxes next to your results and click on the email icon, enter your email address and click send. Make sure you click the abstract box to ensure you get all the information about the articles. You will now receive an email with a record of your search results.
It is also possible to set up an RSS feed so that you can keep up to date on any developments on your topic. You will then receive feeds whenever new material relevant to your search terms are added to BEI without having to conduct your search regularly. This will be conveniently located in your Portal for easy access.
Once you are happy that your search retrieves the desired results, you can click on create RSS feed in the top right of the screen. You can then name the feed and click create feed. You then need to copy the URL from the top box.
You will now need to go into Cardiff Portal, and select My Page. Under My RSS you need to click on the customize portlet button, click Add then paste the URL into the box. Click on Add and then Save. Your RSS feed is now complete and should now show some results on your personalized Portal page.
Conclusion
We hope you have found this short video useful. If you would like more help with using the British Education Index, please contact your subject librarian (www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/subjectlibrarians) or consult the Library’s BEI guides (http://www.cf.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/guides/databases/index.html)