Welcome
This video will introduce you to the AgeLine library database and provide you with some
tips on finding articles using this resource.
What is AgeLine?
It is a library database of research in the field of social gerontology.
That means the articles in this database all pertain to people 50 or older, and to issues
of aging.
How do you search for articles in AgeLine?
Well, you can search by author, title, subject, or by keyword, as you would in other databases.
And, like other databases, you can use limiters to refine your results.
However, AgeLine does not give you the option to limit your results only to peer-reviewed
sources, so you've got to use some other strategies to find the best and most credible
scholarly sources using this database.
Let's take a look.
Let's start on the PSU Library website.
We know we want a database, so we click on databases and articles.
Then, since we know the name of the database, let's go right to the alphabetical list
of resources and click on "A" for AgeLine.
Then we just have to scroll down the list until we find the resource we're looking
for.
There it is!
We're going to click on AgeLine and we'll be ready to get started searching.
Now I'm in the AgeLine database.
Let's say I want to search for scholarly articles on policies relating to aging drivers.
I'm not going to use "aging" in my search, because all of the articles in this database
should cover issues relating to aging.
I do want to search for "drivers" or "driving" though, so I'm going to type in the first
part of the word with an asterisk.
That way, I'll get anything like "driver" or "driving" or anything that starts with
D-R-I-V.
I'm also going to add in the word "policy," but I'm going to do the same thing with
the asterisk, so this way I get "policies" or "policy" or anything that begins the
same way.
Now let's hit "Search" and see what comes up.
I got quite a few articles.
Now I want to limit my results.
The first thing I can do is limit my search to academic journal articles.
I go over here to source types, and I click on the box that says academic journals.
Remember, in this database you can't limit to only peer-reviewed sources, so you have
to try to get peer-reviewed sources another way.
You can see that that really limited my results.
I lost 200 results by clicking on academic journals only.
Another trick you could try is to limit by target audience.
To do that, you have to click on "Advanced Search" and then you look for the box labelled
"Target Audience."
Within that box you've got some choices.
I'm going to click on "Research," because I'm looking for academic peer-reviewed research
articles on aging driver policies, but there are other options, like general consumer audience,
professional or provider audience, or public policy audience.
I'm going to click on "Search" and see what I get.
Now I've got 129 results; that's a lot fewer, and if you look at "Source Types,"
you'll see that it's gone back to showing me all types of sources.
I'm going to click on "Academic Journals" again to limit it once more.
Now I've got only 53 results, that's going to be a lot easier to sort through.
So I'm going to look through these and see what I can find that relates to policy issues
regarding aging drivers.
It looks like there's quite a few about active aging, about law and policy, about
driving risk, and most of these should be academic, peer-reviewed, research articles.
When you look at the actual articles, you want to make sure that they are scholarly
articles, because occasionally you'll get something like a letter or something like
that is published in an academic journal, but it's not really a peer-reviewed article.
But most of these should be academic peer-reviewed research articles, because that is how we
limited our search.
An example of the type of letter that can fool you initially is this letter to the editor
in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Because the journal is an academic journal, it still shows up in your search when you
limit to academic journal articles only, even though it's not peer-reviewed research.
The abstract makes it clear that it's a letter to the editor, though, so justmake
sure that you look at the abstract, too, to verify that what you've found really is
research.
To review, AgeLine is a database that you can use to look for research in the field
of social gerontology.
The database supports keyword searching, but it does not allow you to limit to peer-reviewed
sources only.
Instead, you can limit your results to academic journals only, and you can also choose to
limit to specific target audiences.
I hope this helped you understand how to use this useful database.
If you need help using this or any other library resource, please ask a PSU librarian, either
in person at the library or via the library website.
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