Search Everything
The search box on the library's main page allows users to search for books, DVDs, videos, academic journals, magazines, newspapers, scholarly articles and more from one search box. If you're trying to access a book or article you already know about, you can enter the title or author's name here. If you're looking to find material about a specific topic, try entering two or three keywords that are likely to appear in discussions of that topic.
What are Keywords?
Keywords are the words you use to search for anything online and they determine how successful your search is. If you're researching the links between poverty and obesity in children, for instance, the most important keywords would be: poverty, obesity, children. Database searches usually work better when you only enter 2-4 essential keywords than when you enter a complete sentence or question.
Here a couple of common problems you may run into and ways to fix them using keywords:
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I'm getting too many results! |
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| I'm getting too few results! |
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| These results are not what I'm looking for! |
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How do I Refine my Search Results?
From your list of results, use the "Refine Your Results" panel to narrow your search by publication date, source type, publisher, language and more.
Advanced Search Tips
This tutorial introduces a few advanced search techniques that may come in handy when searching in online databases--Boolean searching (using AND, OR, NOT), phrase searching, and truncation. It was created by Kate Cushon for the Archer Library at Canada's University of Regina and is used here with permission granted under a Creative Commons attribution license.
(If you're really pressed for time, start at 0:48 and watch until 4:25. Those are the best, most broadly relevant parts.)