English 101 - Cat Pleska: Library Searching

Here are a few more helpful tips...

• Sometimes, we have search terms that are hard for a database to understand. For example: social media is a term, social is another term, and media is yet another term. But, they all mean very different things. So, when you need to keep a multiple-word search together, you may want to include quotation marks to keep the database from separating your words: "social media" versus social media. 
• Some databases will provide links to similar sources. Look for something that says Find Similar Results, or You May Also Like to discover additional relevant sources. Often, these options are on the sides of the page, or near the top or bottom. 
• When you find an article that is exactly what you were hoping to find, check out the References, Bibliography or Endnotes page (at the end), or Footnotes (at the bottom of each page). This information will tell you what that author used in their research, and may point you toward resources you otherwise might never have found.