How to Search for Articles: Finding Articles

Use the library's databases to access articles.

A database is like a library that only contains scholarly journals.

Some databases cover specific topics other databases are more general.

• To find a database that is specific to your field, click here
• EbscoHost and ProQuest are great general databases that cover multiple topics.

Searching Tips #1-  Search Fields

To make your search more narrow and specific, choose AB or ABSTRACT from the pull-down menu. An abstract is a summary of the article.

All Text is the default choice; the All Text option will search for your search term anywhere in the paper. Choosing All Text will make your search broader but less focused.

Searching Tips #2- Quotation Marks

To search for a phrase, use quotation marks. Using quotation marks around a phrase makes the database look for the words together.

Examples:

• “Abstract Expressionism”

• “French Revolution”

•  “health care”

• "small groups"

Searching Tips #3- Identify Search Terms

When searching for articles, you will want to identify multiple search terms.

For example, if I were searching for information about brownies I would also use the terms dessert, pastries, treats, snacks, etc.

Thinking of different words or synonyms will help you get a better search result.

Searching Tips #4- Truncation *

To continue with the brownie example, I might be interested in searching for brownies and a brownie.

Using a truncation (*) would allow me to search for brownies and a brownie at the same time.

Adding an asterisk (*) after a word stem let's you search for all words that begin with that stem.

For example, searching teach* would cover teacher, teachers, teaches, and teaching.