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PAID 112 Section 19: Drews (2024)

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  • Search the Preus Library catalog for books or browse selected books
  • Selected databases for scholarly articles
  • Search tips for strategic exploration

 

Research Databases

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Search Preus Library and beyond

Limit results to:
Advanced Search

Selected Book Resources

Strategic Exploration

Research is nonlinear and iterative.

You'll often find yourself circling back to try new strategies or use different resources. 

It's important to try the catalog and a few different databases, plus a few different search terms--searching in different places and with different words will give you different results.

 

Where should I search?

How can I search it?

What will I find?

WorldCat

(Preus Library Catalog)

Search box on the library homepage
  • Reference works (both print and online)
  • Print books
  • E-books
  • Scholarly articles
  • Newspaper and magazine articles
  • DVDs
  • CDs
Databases Select a database from the All Databases list
  • Scholarly articles
  • Newspaper and magazine articles (both current and historical)
  • E-books
The Web Google, Duck Duck Go, etc.
  • Websites for companies, organizations, and groups
  • Newspaper and magazine articles (although you may hit paywalls)
  • Blogs
  • Social media
  • Government information
  • Digital collections of primary sources from libraries and museums
  • And more...
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TIP:

A database is a collection of scholarly journals and articles that lets us search many potential sources at once. Databases can be general and cover many subjects, or be specific to one or several subjects.

Browse the All Databases list to see the databases Preus Library has access to.

 

Mix and match your keywords -- and your strategies.

Phrase Searching

Is your topic a string of words or phrases? To search for a phrase in which word order matters, put quotation marks (" ") around your search term.

For example: "social media" ; "higher education" ; "reality television"

 

AND, OR, NOT (Boolean)

Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can help you combine and exclude terms from your searches.

  • AND is great when your topic has a few aspects that you're trying to research the connections between
    • For example, video games AND violence
  • OR is ideal for including synonyms or related terms in one search
    • For example, lions OR tigers
  • NOT is used when you want to exclude some terms from your results
    • For example, enterprise NOT star trek

Remember Venn Diagrams? They're a great way to visualize what the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can do for your research.

boolean operators illustrated by venn diagram

 

One step further

You can combine phrase searching and more than one Boolean operator to make complex, specific searches.

  • (lions OR Tigers) AND poaching
  • "video games" AND (violence OR aggression)
  • "higher education" AND testing NOT gre

 

Subject Headings

Use the terms librarians use to classify and organize information! As you browse the catalog or a database and find a resource that looks promising, look for hyperlinked subjects, also called subject headings. In the catalog, you'll have to expand the View Description section to see these. An example of subjects from the catalog is shown in the image below.

subject heading example from the catalog

Clicking on one of these subjects will start another search that shows all results that are tagged with the same subject - it's a great way to find similar research to something you've identified as useful!

Ask Your Librarian

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Ryan Gjerde
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