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Database Search Tips

 

 

Databases are collections of article citations, some complete articles, statistics, images, and a wealth of other information, in electronic format.  They differ from information available on the free web, in that they contain scholarly or proprietary information, which requires a subscription to access.  As FHSU students, you are authorized to access these databases through the library's paid subscriptions.  You have paid for this access with your tuition. 

  
NOTE:  To access the databases from off-campus, you must first set up Off-Campus Access.
 
 

How To Search

 
I. Type in the most important words in your topic. For example, if your topic is “What are the best materials to use to reinforce plastic?”, you would type in materials AND reinforce AND plastic.              
 
       NOTE:  You can use symbols called "truncators" and "wildcards" to broaden your search, like this:
 
  •        Use an asterisk* at the end of a word stem to get all forms of that word.  For example, process* will find process, processes, processing, processed. 
 
  •        Use a question mark ? to stand in for any letter. For example, wom?n will find woman and women.
 
II. Click on the drop-down arrow next to “keyword” and select where you want the computer to look for your search words.
 
  •  Keyword: Look everywhere. This will yield the most results, but you will also get a lot of irrelevant results that only mention your search word, but don’t focus on your topic.
     
  •  Title: Look only in the title of the article or book. This will yield more results that truly focus on your topic. 
     
    If you get no results, or too few, try searching for synonyms or variations of your topic to broaden your search. For example: 
               
              (reinforce* plastic)
                AND
              (glass or glass fiber or graphite fiber or ceramic fiber)
 
This will yield articles that have reinforce* plastic  and one or more of these words: glass, glass fiber, etc.
 
  •  Author: Look only in the Author(s)’ name(s). 
 
  •  Abstract: Look in the summary of the article. Because abstracts contain the main
          topics of an article, searching here produces results in which your topic is a major subject.
 
  •  Subject: Look in the Subject terms—words which describe what each
            article or book focuses on. Searching only in the subject results in a very focused search. 
Bear in mind that different databases may have different subject terms for your topic.
 
    III. Place LIMITS on your search, if desired
 
  •  Full-Text: Limits your results to those for which the complete article is available.  
 
  •  Peer-Reviewed/Scholarly: Limits your results to those which are scholarly journal articles. This will block any magazine or newspaper articles.
 
  •  Date :Select a span of years to search, or search all available dates.

     

    IV.  Viewing your articles:

           If the full-text of the article is available, there will be a link for HTML and/or PDF underneath the title.  If there is no link, click on "Get Article" or "LinkSource" to search our other databases for the article. Click the link below for complete instructions on locating the full-text of articles.

     


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