This document provides an introduction to EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) for students at Antelope Valley College. EDS allows students to search the library's electronic resources, including books, ebooks, articles, videos and more from a single search box. It explains how to access EDS from the library homepage and how to conduct searches. The results screen is divided into search results on the right and filters on the left to refine results. Filters include date, resource type, and subject to better target searches. Mastering EDS will help students effectively research and find relevant academic materials.

1. Intro to
EBSCO Discovery Service
(EDS)
LIB 107 Tutorial - Summer, 2020
Dr. Scott Lee
Electronic Resources Librarian
Antelope Valley College

2. What is EDS?
• EDS connects all of the Library’s electronic
resources into one interface.
• EDS allows you to search for books, eBooks,
articles, videos and more at the same time.

3. Notes on Using This PowerPoint
• I recommend that you look through this entire
presentation and then practice using EDS with
it as a guide.
• EDS is always adjusting its content and the
screen captures in the examples I show you
may have different numbers from your search
results.

4. Where is EDS?
• EDS can be found on the Library’s homepage,
which is at this address:
– www.avc.edu/studentservices/library/

5. Library Homepage w/EDS Search Box

6. The EDS Search Box
There are Two Tabs
• Electronic Resources
– Allows you to search for any
and all electronic or online
resources available in EDS.
• Library Catalog
– This tab searches the AVC
Library’s catalog (Primo) for
books and eBooks. eBooks
located here will send you
back to EDS.

7. The EDS Search Box
Below the Search Box
• Full-Text
– This limits your search to only
full-text articles and resources.
Some resources only have
citations and abstracts, and this
will remove those from your
search results.
• Scholarly (Peer Reviewed)
Journals
– This limits your search to the
highest quality research
materials which are Scholarly
Journals. Some instructors
require you to only use
scholarly journals. By selecting
this, you know you are only
getting Scholarly Journals.

8. You can search for Titles, Authors or conduct a Keyword search.
Title and Author are fields in a database, along with Subject and
others. A Keyword search will look in all fields at once, and is the
most thorough type of search.

9. Conducting a Search
• For this example, I will do a Keyword search in the Electronic
Resources tab for information on information literacy. I will limit
my search to Full Text & Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.
• After clicking the Search Button, I will be shown a screen with my
results.

10. When accessing EDS from off the AVC campus, you need to be logged in to your AVC
ID account. This is how EDS can verify you as an AVC student.
If you’re on the AVC campus, this not necessary and you will be taken directly to the
EDS Results Screen, which is on the next slide.

11. The Results Screen

12. The Results Screen
• The Results Screen shows how many and what
types of resources have been found from your
search.
• The Results Screen is separated into two columns:
The Search Results Column is on the right - taking
up most of the screen - and the Refine Results
Column on the left.

15. For each located resource, EDS provides a
citation (Title, Author, Date, Subject Terms) and
a link to the full-text. These two articles from
my results have PDF files for their full-text.
Articles and eBooks usually provide their full
text as PDF files.
The icons left of the citations
identify what type of format the
resources are (academic journal,
book, eBook, video, etc.)
The Search Results Column

16. Clicking on the title of a resources takes you to the full
citation and an abstract. An abstract is a brief description
of what is in the article.

17. Whenever you are in the full citation for any resource,
you can get back to your list of search results by clicking
Result List.

18. The Refine Results Column

19. The Refine Results Column
• As previously stated, the Refine Results
Column allows you to control your results
through the use of limiters.
• Limiters are options you use to reduce the
number of resources found. Using limiters,
gets results that are better suited to your
needs.
• I will only show you a few of the available
limiters. Explore others on your own.

20. Limit By Year
• You can limit your results
to a specific range of years.
– You can either move the
slider bars or enter new
years in the boxes.
– By default, EDS selects all
years for which resources
are available. BTW, yes there
are resources from 1897 on
information literacy.

21. Limit By Year
• On the next slide, you will see that I have chosen to limit
my search from 2010 to 2020. This reduced my number of
results from around 640 thousand to around 390 thousand.
• This shows that most of the research on information
literacy (about 60%) occurred in the last decade.

23. Date Limiter & Breadbox
Notice the box above the date
limiter labeled Current Search.
This is the Breadbox. It shows
which limiters you have in place.
You can remove a limiter at any
time by clicking the small grey
box with the white x next to that
limiter.
Note: The items above the
Limiters section of the Current
Search box is called Expanders. It
allows you to search within the
text of articles and eBooks for
your search terms. This is set by
default and it’s recommended
that you never remove it.

24. Date Limiter & Breadbox
• On the right, you can
see that I removed
the Scholarly (Peer
Reviewed) Journals
limiter and the Full
Text limiter.
• Above, you can see it
increased my results
to 840 thousand.
• You can always
remove and/or add a
limiter whenever you
wish.

25. Resource Types Limiter
• Below the Date Limiter
is the Resource Types
Limiter.
– You can choose to limit
yourself to specific types
of information
resources.
– Click Show More to get
an expanded list of
options, as shown on the
next slide.
The numbers in parentheses show how
many results of that type of resource
were found.

26. I will limit my Resource Types to eBooks and Videos. You can use
the scroll bar on the right to see all of your options.
The next slide shows it reduced my results to about 42 thousand.

27. Resource Types Limiter - Results

28. The first several resources found are eBooks.
An eBook can be accessed through the PDF Full Text, EPUB Full Text and/or
Full Download links. These are different ways of accessing the same eBook
content.

29. For video content, most videos will require you to follow links to an external
resource.

30. To continue demonstrating the use of limiters, I have removed the eBooks, and
Videos limiters. I have also re-applied the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals
and Full Text limiters.
Before the Change After the Change

31. Subject Limiter
• The last limiter we will
look at is the Subject
Limiter.
• To use it, click the arrow
next to the words Limit
by Subject (the top
image) and it will expand
into a menu (the bottom
image).
• Then click Show More
and the screen on the
next slide will appear.

32. • Each resource in EDS has a list of subject terms that are related to it (you saw an
example back on slide 16). EDS takes all of the subject terms that appear in the
thousands of resources and ranks them according to how many times they appear.
• Above are the most popular subject terms for my search. I can use this as a guide to
discover which concepts most apply to my search and find more relevant
information. I can also use it to narrow my search to more specific topics.

33. Looking at my options, I will focus on resources related to academic
achievement and educational technology within the broader concept of
information literacy. Therefore, I will select those subject terms.

34. Subject Limiter
Using those Subject
Terms in this limiter
lowered my results to
just 14,039
Also, the subject terms I
selected show in my
Breadbox.
Again, you can remove
any or all subject terms
when you want, just like
any other limiter.

35. As you can see, EDS is a powerful research and information discovery tool. Mastering it
will allow you to navigate a deep collection of information resources and find what will
best serve your academic needs. Like any skill, it requires training and experience to do it
properly. Use of EDS will be part of Exam #2, so you need to become comfortable using it
to be successful on that exam. It will also be necessary for Project #3.

36. Intro to
EBSCO Discovery Service
(EDS)
LIB 107 Tutorial
Summer, 2020