1. Identify main concepts and keywords. Break your topic/question down into three of four different keywords rather than putting the whole title of your assignment in the database search box . E.g., if you are wanting to find research relating to the effects of caffeinated drinks on the performance of cyclists, you could break your search down into the three concepts:
cyclists AND caffeinated drinks AND performance.
2.Find Synonyms (alternative keywords) (Boolean OR broadens the search to include alternative keywords or subject thesaurus terms):
3. AND (joins concepts and narrows the search) :
4. Be aware of differences in American and English spelling and terminology. Most databases use American spelling and terminology as preferred subject terms.
5. Use Truncation (putting * at the end of a word stem will search all forms of the word). This is a really useful technique as it avoids having to run lots of separate searches and ensures you are not missing out on relevant results.
6. "...." (inverted commas) use for a phrase
My EBSCOhost will allow you to:
For further information see the video tutorial
Databases are:
You can search across most of the Library's databases (we have over 200) using the Find books and articles search on the Library homepage (using the Advanced search is the best). But searching across individual databases provides access to subject specific high quality articles and you won't be overwhelmed by the sheer number of results you are finding (as you can be using the main library search).