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Research Databases: Lists of the research databases in an A-Z list. or broken down into content/subject areas.
Online Journals List: Search by title or keyword, or browse by subject area. This resource lists all of the online journals we subscribe to, along with dates of coverage from each electronic journal source.
OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center: "...a collection of full-text research journals, in 1998. The EJC contains more than 9,000 scholarly journal titles from 101 publishers across a wide range of disciplines. Researchers can download electronic articles instantly, read entire journal issues online, create e-mail or RSS alerts for new issues, save searches, and set up automatic search alerts for new search results. More than 3.7 million articles are used each year from the EJC, with a total of more than 37 million articles used since its inception."
1. Break up your topic
Try to think of your topic as a combination of factors that will all come together in the ‘perfect’ article, rather than a single sentence.
Eliminate parts of the topic that are implied by the database (e.g., you don’t have to search ‘education’ or ‘students’ when everything in the database will relate.)
2. Cover all your options
Brainstorm different words or phrases that could be used for each part of the topic.
If the database has a thesaurus (i.e., ERIC), use the database functionality to help you find the right words.
If you do a simple search and find a few articles, look at the Subject Headings (or Descriptors) to see what words the database may use for your topic.
Remember to expand acronyms, for example: FERPA = Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
***Search for each part of the topic, combining synonyms or near-synonyms with OR.***
3. Put it all together
***Combine all parts of your topic (the ‘OR’ searches above) using AND to require that all parts are in everything that comes back.***
Didn’t get anything? Try leaving out the most specific or peripheral parts of the search… you may be breaking new ground!
In some databases (Education Research Complete, Google Scholar), you can search within the text of the article for your words… be prepared to get a lot!
Get too much? You can be more specific by looking at the database limits, for example, by publication year, type, grade level, language, audience, etc.
Still too much? You may need to add in more specific criteria, or you could try your search again using only the databases’ approved ‘Subject’ terminology.
4. clean up
Read abstracts to determine what is really relevant.
Store records (or add to your folder) so that you can e-mail the results to yourself… include the search history with your e-mail if possible.
Use the Find It @ UToledo to see what is available. If you come across the full text of an article, you can save it or print.
5. Follow up
If you find particularly good articles, be sure to follow up on their lists of references. Also, follow up on articles that may have cited your article using the Social Sciences Citation Index database.
Use the search boxes at the top of the Advanced Search screen to search for concepts relating to your topic. The AND between each box means that each separate concept must be in all search results. You can specify where these words appear: Select a Field means the word will be found in the title, author, journal name, abstract, or subject heading. To search more precisely, you can search for words in just the Subject Headings, for example.
Sign in to save searches from one session to another, or to set up recurring searches to be run for you automatically.
Below each result, you may see links to full text, or a Find It link to look for full text in our other databases or subscriptions.