Image copyright GotCredit.com. Used under the terms of a CC BY 2.0 License.
Keep your searches simple and only search the most important words. Avoid searching complex phrases or including connecting words in your searches. For example, search Social Media bullying instead of: Problems with social media and bullying.
Brainstorm different words to describe the same idea and try them all! Don't be afraid to try many variations of the same search. Read more about Keywords:
The words AND, OR and NOT are special to databases. They aren't searched as keywords, but instead tell the database how to treat other words in your search query.
Using AND between two keywords requires results to have both terms. Using OR means a result only has to have one of the terms to be considered relevant. Using NOT excludes results with the specified keyword.
Read more about Boolean Operators:
Image Copyright Catherinecronin. Used under the terms of a CC BY-SA 2.0 License.
Use the article databases to search for citations, abstracts, full-text articles, and lesson plans.
Click on the pdf link to gain access to the full-text of an article. If there isn't a full-text link search Grafton's Journal Finder to see if we have access to the journal in another database.
If the Journal Finder doesn't have the journal you're looking for use Interlibrary Loan to request the article from another library. Interlibrary Loan is free and often only takes a few days.
Learn more about how to find the full-text of journal articles:
General Databases include articles on a wide range of topics and subjects. If your topic belongs to more than one subject or you’re not having much luck with subject specific databases you may want to try a general article database.
Google Scholar is searching the open web, so be critical the sources!