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 you can use to combine your search keywords most efficiently are: and, or, and not.
AND (or sometimes symbolized as the + plus sign) tends to narrow searches because all words must be included in results. An example search with AND or the plus sign would be education and children.
OR tends to broaden searches because one or other terms (or all) can be present in results. An example search using OR would be dog or canine.
NOT selectively eliminates any results containing a specified word. An example search using NOT would be executive not CEO.
The two symbols you can also use to further refine your search keywords 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.
Here's an example of what a keyword search might look like in the Education Full Text database:
Most databases also have a Subject or Controlled Vocabulary search mode that you can use in alone or in combination with search keywords (as seen in the image below). 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. This will add the subject into the search fields at the top of the page, and will display a list of all the articles that are associated with that subject. You can add more keywords to further refine your search while staying within the group of articles assigned to the subject in your search box.
What if I just want to see a list of all the subjects and begin my search from there?
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.
The Thesaurus search page has options for matching your keywords to potential subjects. You can also use the search builder buttons to combine multiple subjects using and, or and not.
What is the quickest way to find and/or browse a journal?
Click on the Journals button on the library's homepage and search by title or ISBN number to find out if the library has a journal, and if so, where to find it online or in print. Typically, a journal entry in the search will list publication information, library call number and location information if the journal is in print, a link to a database for online content along with the dates available, and more information. If we don't have the journal you need, try Google Scholar or more reliably, use the Interlibrary Loan service.
How do you request items from the library? Find out more on the next tab, the Request Items page.