In mineral engineering reading and writing, trade publications,magazines research journals and conference proceedings are all important resources.  

To find these items, you can use an article database. An article database searches across hundreds or even thousands of journals at once, so you don't have to know what journals are in your field.

A list of relevant databases for surface mining that contain research articles, magazine articles, trade publications and conference proceedings are in the box on the left side of this page. Be sure to take a look at the Database Search Tips section. 

• Each Database is slightly different.  Make sure you check the Help files of the database so you know you are searching it properly.

• Some databases, such as COMPENDEX use controlled terminology.

• That means that someone looks at each and every article in the database and tags it with words from a thesaurus, so no matter what words the author uses, the words being used to describe the article are consistent; if you use the words that the database uses, you will get all if the articles in the database on that topic.

• That also means that if you use the words that the database uses to search for articles, the articles don't just have your search terms in the article, but the article is actually about that topic

• it is a very powerful way to search, and helps you to narrow down your search and helps to make your search results more relevant

• Other databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science, use keyword searches, so you have to be very creative in the search terms you use

• the database only searches for what you type in, so if you use "surface mining" but there are relevant articles in the database that use "strip mining", "open-pit mining", "mountaintop removal mining" etc. you won't find those articles

• Use truncation, wildcards, etc. - often the * symbol, to expand your search
• for example, searching for "engineer*" in COMPENDEX returns engineer, engineers, engineering, engineered, etc. - you don't have to type in each of those terms
• in COMPENDEX, searching for sul*ate returns sulfate or sulphate
• remember, each database has it's own quirks, so look at the help files of each database to learn how best to use wildcards or truncation for each search