Introduction
The instruction here applies to most library databases used to find articles in magazines and scholarly journals. More specialized searching requires different strategies. Be sure to look at the other tabs in this guide to find additional tips and ideas about finding other sorts of information you need for assignments in this class!
Database Searching in 4 Steps: The Video
Is it really only 4 steps?
Pick a Database by answering these questions:
- Who do you want to hear from? Which disciplines would have done research in this area? Or, maybe you want to hear from folks working in a certain field? Perhaps librarians have something to say on that topic? Or oil & gas executives?
- What formats are you going for? Books? Scholarly articles? Streaming video? Newspaper articles?
- Do you need current information? Or, are you wanting to search historically?
Construct/Compose a logical beginning search by:
- Deciding on the simplest, clearest terms for each concept/idea inherent in your research topic
- Connecting the ideas with AND
- Separating synonyms with OR
- Truncating to pick up word variants
- Enclosing phrases in quotations
For example the search pictured below is looking for material on how Muslims are portrayed in popular media:
Revise your initial search by:
- Scrutinizing your search results looking for additional or better terms
- being especially attentive to the words appearing the Subject fields
- making logical use of the Boolean OR
- perhaps, limiting major concepts to the SUBJECT field search:
Efficiently sort through your results by:
- Collecting relevant citations using tools of the database
- Emailing yourself formatted citations
- Utilizing the Find-It-@-SCU link to locate additional fulltext