Check out the library's self-paced tutorial How do I search library databases? to learn the basics of database searches.
1. What is Mardigian Search and why should I use it?
- Mardigian Search is the library's Discovery search box, which looks through all of the library's databases at once.
- Mardigian Search is great for:
- finding out what's been studied in your research area
- finding sources about interdisciplinary topics
2. How do I search for sources about my research topic?
- Identify the keywords of your topic and use those as your search words.
- Each book and article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make each book or article searchable
- You want your search words to match those tags.
- Words like impact, effect, or factors are not used as tags
Example: Your research question is: Does religion in the African American community buffer against suicide?
- A search about this topic could be: "African American*" suicide religio*
- Add an * to the end of a word stem to search for all words that begin with that word stem
- African American* will search for African American and African Americans
- religio* will search for religion and religious
- Put a phrase in quotation marks to search for its words as a phrase, not separate words
- "African American*" searches for African Americans as a phrase, not separate words
3. How do I focus my search hits to current, peer-reviewed journal articles?
- Use Refine Your Search options to focus your search results to just peer-reviewed articles
- Peer-reviewed articles:
- Check the box beside Peer Reviewed
- Check the box beside Journal article under Content Type
- Current/Recent articles:
- Under Publication Date, move the scroll bar over to 2010 to present
4. I have too many irrelevant search hits. How do I focus them?
- Use the options under Refine Your Search to focus your search hits
- Under Discipline, check the boxes beside relevant disciplines to focus your search results to those disciplines
- Under Subject Terms, check the boxes beside the subjects that interest you to focus your search results to your specific research areas of interest
- When you find an article that looks interesting, look at its assigned tags (subjects)
- Click on Preview below the article description
- Look at its assigned Subjects/tags
- Add any relevant tags (words) to your search
- This will also help you develop your research topics and search for books and articles for them
5. How do I know my search words match the tags assigned to sources about my research area?
- As you scroll through the search hits, look at the Subjects (tags) assigned to the relevant articles you find, and see if they match your search words
- Subjects (tags) also help you identify the specific populations or issues in your research area
6. How do I preview the abstract/summary of articles in the list of search hits?
- Click on Preview below the article description
7. How do I access the article so I can read the whole thing?
- Click on Full Text Online
- Look for pdf Full Text or HTML Full Text links
8. I can't find anything on my topic. What do I do?
- The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags that have been assigned to books and articles on that topic
- Look through the Subject terms in the Refine Your Search sidebar and check the boxes beside the topic areas that interest you
- When you find an article that looks interesting, look at its assigned tags/subjects
- Add any relevant tags to your search
- This will also help you develop your research questions and search for articles about your specific research questions
- There may not be research tying your main ideas together yet
- Try searching for your main ideas separately and linking their findings together
- If you've found one article that's relevant for your topic, look through the sources in its References list to see if any of them are also relevant to your research
- Ask your course professor or the Sociology/Criminology & Criminal Justice Librarian, Nadine Anderson, for help
