Finding Articles
If you're looking only for articles--including scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles--use the dropdown menu beside the main search box to select "Articles."
Enter a few important subject-related keywords in the search box and hit the "Search" button.
You can narrow your results even further on your search results screen. If you're only interested in articles from Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed journals, look for the "Limit To" panel and click the box that says "Scholarly Sources." Your results list will be updated to weed out non-scholarly sources.
Best Bet Library Databases
- General Science Collection This link opens in a new windowProvides access to scholarly journals and magazines covering the latest scientific developments.
- MEDLINE This link opens in a new windowThis is the world’s most comprehensive source of full text for medical journals, providing full text for more than 1,470 journals.
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowComprises more than 24 million citations for biomedical literature. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
Choosing Keywords
- Selecting & Using Keywords
Created by librarians at Santiago Canyon College, this short video focuses on selecting and using keywords. Explains how keywords improve search results.
Combining Search Terms
You can create complex search strategies by combining keywords using the linking words AND, OR and NOT. For example, if your search terms are mathematics AND curriculum:
- AND – Narrows and focuses the search results. The search mathematics AND curriculum will bring only results where both the terms mathematics and curriculum are present.
- OR – Broadens the search results. Using OR will bring results where the term mathematics is present, or results where curriculum is present, or results where both terms are present. OR is useful if you have more than one way to refer to a concept -- Example: elementary OR primary.
- NOT – Excludes anything where the term after the NOT is present -- Example: school NOT college