EDLD 6312: Clinical Leadership Laboratory: Home

What's a keyword?

It's really important to distill your topic down into searchable keywords. You might need to change your keyword language or spelling, or use what we call "boolean operators" to combine keywords to get the best results.

The three words that comprise boolean search operators are and, or, and not. Take a look at the image to the right to get a sense of how they work. 

AND tends to narrow searches because all words must be included in results.

OR tends to broaden searches because one or other terms (or all) can be present in results.

NOT selectively eliminates any results containing a specified word.

The two symbols you can also use are "quotation marks" and the asterisk *.

"Quotation marks" searches for groups of words together. This works best if you are looking for a title or phrase.  

The asterisk * is usually found above the number eight on most keyboards. Use the asterisk * to abbreviate words so you can find all possible spelling variations in your search results. It will also make your search results increase, typically.

Most databases also have a Subject or Controlled Vocabulary search mode that you can use in alone or in combination with search keywords. This mode uses words or phrases as categories or tags that are linked so you can see all the articles associated with that subject term or phrase.

Subject Search - The easiest way to use this mode is to find an article you like, then click on the Subjects field in the extended article detail view. Typically you can add keywords or just see a list of all the articles that are associated with that subject. 

You can access subjects through the Thesaurus.  The Thesaurus link is on the upper left hand side on the blue navigation bar in EBSCO databases. Click to search the Thesaurus for subject terms. 

Creating a personal account in databases (when available) is an advantage for advanced researchers, especially if you are working on multiple long-term projects. Some of the features available when you create an account in a database include:

• Custom citation lists
• Folders and subfolders for organizing citations
• Persistent saved citation storage across devices
• Search alerts
• RSS feeds
• Direct integration with Citation Management Tools like Refworks or Endnote.

Databases that allow you to create an account include:

• Ebsco Databases (Education Full-text, ERIC, and others)
• JSTOR
• ProQuest Databases (ERIC and others)
• Web of Science

Google Scholar lets you set up an account and a researcher/scholar profile to list your publications and profile, among other things!

Google Scholar is free to use on the internet, and has lots of full-text articles included. Google Scholar also allows you to search explore papers that have cited a certain paper, and includes Web of Science citation counts and lists when available. 

You can also set up your own researcher/scholar profile, and organize citations.

Google Scholar also contains much more content in languages other than English and English content from more geographically diverse areas.

Lateral reading is using other websites and sources to verify claims and content on websites you are evaluating. It is a strategy used by professional fact-checkers. It's as simple as opening up a few more windows on your browser and searching other sites for claims, persons, things, and events to verify content as your read the source page. You might find this strategy useful when evaluating content you find online.

It's different than vertical reading, which is when you stay on a website and follow the links or analyze the content on your source page without verifying with outside sources. ]

• Demonstration link: Edutopia article

If the full-text of the article is unavailable in the database or via Google Scholar use the Interlibrary Loan Service (ILL) to order the article or book to be delivered online or physically to you. It's fast and quick, and best of all, you already have an account - just activate by logging in to ILLiad with your IslandID and password! 

If you truly can't wait and have the time and resources to travel to another library in Texas, you can get a TexShare card at the Circulation desk that will allow you to check out books at other university and public libraries throughout the state.