Search Tips
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?
Set some basic Limits, usually just below the search boxes, like:
- Dates -- some of our databases have some very old things in them!
- Language -- while most are predominant English, there are some that are extremely international.
- Format -- many databases include things other than journal articles, like dissertations, and you may not want all of that!
Construct/Compose a logical beginning search by:
- Deciding on the simplest, clearest terms for each concept/idea inherent in your research topic; and, then
- connecting the ideas with AND; and, then
- separating synonyms with OR; and, then
- truncating to pick up word variants; and, then
- enclosing any phrases in quotations.
For example the search pictured below is looking for material on how Muslims are portrayed in popular media:
Revise your first search by:
- Scrutinizing your search results looking for additional or better terms; and
- being especially attentive to the words appearing the Subject fields; and
- making logical use of the Boolean OR; and
- perhaps, limiting major concepts to the Subject field search (assuming you saw these words/phrases used as Subjects).
Using the example above, I would change my search like this:
Efficiently sort through your results by:
- Collecting relevant citations using tools of the database; and, then
- emailing yourself formatted citations; and, always
- utilizing the Find-It-@-SCU link to locate additional fulltext.