Inclusion of People with Disabilities in Leisure Services: Helpful Databases

To access electronic materials from your home you have to be affiliated with Kent State University. Off-campus (or remote) access to the University Libraries’ electronic resources is now provided through a new service known as KSU Proxy. KSU Proxy replaced the KSU VPN  for remote library access. KSU Proxy allows Library users to securely connect to databases, electronic journals,  ebooks, and streaming media services without installing complicated third-party software. When you attempt to access library content from off campus, you’re prompted to enter your FlashLine username and password after which you’re connected.

For more information on connecting from off-campus, please visit the Connect from Off-Campus page.

This video demonstrates how to search in a few of the databases to find articles.

Databases are search engines that the library purchases (they are not free) that index articles from journals. You can use the databases to search through multiple journals at the same time by keyword. Below are some databases that you may find useful. 

Academic Search Complete: This is a good general purpose database that can provide basic information on lots of different topics. Provides full text for more than 4,000 scholarly publications covering academic areas of study including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.

Business Source Complete: This is helpful if you are looking for business information related to the travel/tourism industry. Contains scholarly publications covering all disciplines of business including marketing, management, economics, finance, accounting, and MIS. Additional materials include country economic reports, case studies company profiles, SWOT analyses, and industry reports.

CINAHL: This is a nursing database that can provide information on disabilities along with treatment measures. 

Education Research Complete: Education Research Complete is a great tool for locating professional and scholarly research on a variety of educational topics including educational policies.

ERIC: ERIC is a useful database for finding educational information from lots of different sources (journals, magazines, books, conferences, and governmental agencies). It contains resources dating back to 1966 and is helpful when conducting historical research in education.

Legal Collection: This database provides secondary information (law review articles, newspaper articles) on legal issues.

LexisNexis Academic: Contains the full-text of newspapers for the past 20 years, federal and state case law and legislative materials, law reviews, company news and financial information, medical and health information, general information sources, and much more. 

LexisNexis Country Profile: Provides access to full text of reports and news about hundreds of countries, including the business and economic situation of a country, analysis of specific industries within a country, export market reports, potential political, financial, and economic risks to business investments and trade, and news about a country. Includes global business content on 190 countries, their industries, and consumer trends.

MedLINE:  This is a good source for medical information relating to disabilities. International index for medical literature, produced by the National Library of Medicine. Addresses all aspects of medicine and health care and offers citations from nearly 4,000 journals, books and book chapters, research, and other sources. 

Sportdiscus: Provides international coverage of sports and fitness literature, including physical fitness, physical education, sports medicine, exercise psychology, biomechanics, psychology, training, coaching, fitness, social and psychological aspects of sport and leisure, play, games, dance, and more. 

When searching in the databases for articles the following tips may help you.

* - This is the truncation symbol, it searches for variations of your term. For example: disabi* will return: disabled, disability, or disabilities

AND - Use the word AND when you want to combine search terms (this will reduce the number of items found). For example: tourism AND china will find articles that discuss tourism and china.

OR - Use the word OR when you are searching for a topic that may have different names (this will expand the number of items found). For example: tourism OR vacation OR leisure OR travel will find articles with any of these words. (this is helpful because authors can use different words for the same idea)

NOT - Use the word NOT when you want to exclude certain terms from your results. For example: qualitative NOT mixed methods will find articles that talk about qualitative research but exclude any that are mixed methods.