Are you required to use magazine articles, news articles, scholarly journal articles? Books? eBooks? Websites?
Are you required to use a specific database, like EBSCO, ProQuest, or JSTOR?
Jot down a few keywords.
Keywords are the main ideas, themes, topics, or subjects of your research topic.
You'll need to use keywords (and not sentences) in the databases.
More on keywords:
Databases: Find articles and ebooks in library databases
Which database(s) should I use?
This depends on your specific topic (are you researching a historical topic, educational, social issues, current events?) and your information need (do you need scholarly articles, literary criticisms, news articles?).
Watch the video below to learn how to limit our list of databases by subject and resource type:
Delivers the best titles from world-class sources. Find comprehensive coverage of the most-studied topics, from the arrival of Vikings in North America 1,000 years ago to Vietnam, Watergate and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This database offers students and researchers unparalleled access to a broad collection of scholarly analysis and full-text periodicals, reference works and primary documents.
Includes core journals in economics, history, political science, and sociology, as well as in other key fields in the humanities and social sciences. This collection also includes over 50 titles in the mathematical and statistical sciences.
Source of high-quality video and multimedia for academic, vocational and life-skills content.
OneSearch: Search library databases and print books at once
OneSearch
OneSearch is a mega-search that you can use to search our library's print materials (like books, magazines, and DVDs) and online databases at the same time.
This can be a good place to start if you want to search multiple databases.
If you are having trouble finding relevant results in OneSearch, you may want to search an individual database instead.
Advanced search
Search most of the library resources in one place
Google: Finding websites and more
What is Google?
Google is a powerful Internet search engine.
Google searches the web for content posted on the Internet, usually in the form of websites.
Since anyone post content on the Internet, you'll want to make sure you're using credible websites in your research. (Review the "Evaluating sources" section of this guide to learn how!)
Google Search Tips for Research
Tips covered in the above tutorial include:
Using quotation marks " " around a phrase to search an exact word order
Using capital OR to search for synonyms or related terms
Using the minus sign - to remove a search term
Using site: to search within a website or top-level domain
Helpful Google Research Tools
Google Books: Use Google Books to browse portions of electronic books found on the open web.
Google Images: Use Google Images to find images, charts, graphs, and statistics. Don't forget to cite the original source!
Google Scholar: Use Google Scholar to find peer-reviewed scholarly articles on the open web. Check our Google Scholar guide to see how to incorporate our library database links!
