Focus. Looking for peer-reviewed journal articles? Or full-text articles? Use the Subjects and Types pull-downs above to focus your search. You may select multiple subjects and types.
Although the topic's unrelated to yours, the search strategies/concepts are extremely useful. Guaranteed to make you laugh and teach you valuable search skills.
Search Effectively
Boil your topic down to the most important words. Ignore superfluous words like in, the, of, with, against, affect, impact. Begin with a keyword search--that is a search using the very most important words of your topic.
Put each "different piece" of your topic into a separate search box. Using the topic of "counseling for grief and depression" as an example below, note how each different piece of the topic is entered on a separate search line. Leave the AND off to the left as it is. Synonyms for the pieces are connected by OR--and kept on the same line--as seen below...
Too many results? Focus your search by searching for your keywords in the ABSTRACT field or the TITLE field. Click on the Select a Field Optional pull down bar to select the abstract or title field. Or...add another concept--perhaps, in this case, looking at the age or gender of the person experiencing grief.
Too few results? Think of synonyms. Synonyms are always crucial to the success of a search. Add synonyms to your search--using OR--and keep your synonyms all on the same line. You can increase your results, too, by searching several databases at once. Click on the CHOOSE DATABASES link above the top search box. Select databases that will be most relevant. Desperate? Select all. You can also increase your results by removing the least important different piece of your search--here, perhaps, you could remove the depression piece.
Still no results? Broaden your search slightly. Still no luck? Try searching different databases.
Look for relevant subject terms. Find subject terms either on the results page under each result shown or at the end of individual records. Write down relevant subject terms that you find. Go back to the search screen and using the subject terms you discovered, search your subject terms in the subject field. Subject terms are gold threads--they will almost always lead you to more results and more relevant results.
Citation search. Have you found one perfect article? Copy that article's title. Paste it into Google Scholar. Once it finds the citation, click on the cited by link underneath it. This'll give you articles that have cited your perfect article--after it has been published.
Exact phrase searching. "Mental health". Putting two or more words between " " when they normally appear side by side, glues them together. Without the " ", the database will search for them glued together AND torn apart.
Field searches. Focus your search within the title, abstract, or subject fields. Or try different combinations of fields.
Truncators. Stem the word--chop the word off to the stem--the piece right before word endings begin. In EBSCO databases, place an * up against the stemmed word. You'll pull in all of the different word endings doing this. For example: bicyc* will pull in bicycles, bicycling, bicycled, bicycler, etc., etc.
Get the full-text with either PDF, HTML, or the link. The Looking for Full-Text? will link you to the full-text article if it is available in a different database.
Use the Get Article link which is provided when the Looking for Full-Text link fails. Use this link to request a copy of the article or book from another library. For a journal article, you'll receive an email from us with a link to the PDF--usually within 3-4 days.
link. The Looking for Full-Text? will link you to the full-text article if it is available in a different database.