Family and Society Studies Worldwide

Tonight I looked at The Family and society studies worldwide database. The database includes articles about culture, families, education and much much more. This is an Ebsco Database so everything is pretty straight forward and easy to use. There is the basic search and then the more advanced search. One search i don't remember ever seeing before is the visual search. Users type a subject into the search bar and a search map appears. It breaks the results down into subheadings and even those subheadings have subheadings. You can limit just a few times and be down to one or two searches. Once you find a few that you may be interested in users can click it and see a summary at the side of their screen. It saves a little time going in and out of article pages that may or may not be useful. It is a really easy and visual way to narrow searches, and it is great for students who work better visually. One thing I did notice that makes browsing this database much easier is hitting the full text option on the side. My first search returned tons of results many being articles that i could not view. After limiting only full text articles the results were much more manageable and I actually found things worth my time. I also came across a few things that seemed a little amateur in their nature or just full of opinions so I think for class purposes it would be wise for patrons to also click the peer reviewed limiter. I think this database is a really great resource. It is easy to use and has a lot of information that could really be helpful to patrons.