Scholarly Sources

Basic Guidelines for Academic Research Database Searches

Getting used to doing research in an academic database can be challenging. The guidelines offered in the video below apply most specifically to Academic Search Complete (also called EBSCO), but are relevant to any academic database.

Key tips that the video will cover:

  • Why typing your whole research question into an academic database won’t work well
  • How to use key words in an academic database
  • What “AND” or “OR” can do to help your search
  • How looking at the Subject Terms that are provided by the database can help you to refine your searches within that databse.

 

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

English 102: Reading, Research, and Writing by Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.