EDD 630
Educational Research Seminar: Overcoming Adversity

Some Steps and Guidelines to Conducting Literature Searches Through Our Library

Accessing CSI’s Online Databases of Articles, Etc.

The following are the basic steps to accessing and using the search engines available through our library.

1. Go to our library’s home page.


2. On the left, choose articles instead of either books, journals, or media.


3. Type in key words into the field just to the right of these options. This works like most search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, etc.).
   • You may also wish to check the “Full Text” and “Peer Reviewed” options right below the search field.
   • When you press Enter, if you are off campus you will need to enter your SLAS username and password to continue.


4. You will be taken to a new page where the search terms you entered are filled in at the top and the initial results appear lower in the main part of the page. You can modify your search terms on this page in several ways:
   • You can break up your search terms, putting one in each of the fields at the top.
   • The default is for search results to find sources that match all of your search terms. This is shown with the Boolean “AND” right before a field.
     • If you click on that button and change it to “OR”, then the engine will find sources that match either of your search terms—not only those that match both.
     • If you change it to “NOT”, then the search engine will find sources that do not contain that term.
     • To the right of each search field is another button for another drop-down menu entitled Select a field (optional). This lets you restrict that field to only search among the authors or to only look up a number as an ISSN (which is kinda like the ISBN for periodicals). Personally, I rarely find using this drop-down menu useful.
   • In the left margin, you will see options that can be clicked on under Refine Search. You can restrict the time range of the search, find only full text (i.e., find sources that only have links to them to the full text of the article, usually as a .pdf file), etc. Of these options, you may wish to restrict to “Full Text” and restrict Source Type to “Academic Journals”, “Journals”, and “Reviews”.


5. The results of your search appear below these search fields. If you make a change to your search, click on the green Search button to refresh the results.
• By default, the list is sorted by relevance, i.e., how well the sources match your search terms. I find this really does usually sort them well by relevance, so I usually leave this alone. You can, however, change this to sort by date (newest to oldest or vice versa).


6. The list of search results gives the title of the source and some more information, including a link to the full text if it’s thought to be available. Clicking on the title will open up a page with more information about that source, including the abstract it that is available, too.


7. There is also a folder button to the top right of each search result. If you click on it, it will send that article to a folder that you can access by clicking on the Folder option in the menu at the very top (and to the right) of the page. The articles you put in your folder will be gone when you close the page unless you first click on the Sign In link, create and account, and then are signed in to your account. If you do create and sign in to an account, then items you put in your folder will still be there when you sign in again later.


8. Finally, if you find an article, etc., that you think will be useful but isn’t available through this site (e.g., there is no full text option), then you can request it through Inter-Library Loans. Thanks to Naglaa, I now know that you log in by using the bar code on the back of your CUNY Dolphin ID card as both the username and password for this site.

More Resources

Here are a few other resources that might help you in your searches and organize/use of the things you find:

• Google Scholar
  Google Scholar is a pretty darnedgood way to find resources. This allows you to narrow your search by date, etc. To help make your searches even more precise, you can use some of Google’s advanced search operators. Although Google Scholar can find information about source, you can’t always access the whole article from it. In this way, it’s like their book search, where you can’t always download the whole book even if Google gives you information about it. So, Google may help you find resources, but you may still need to go through our library to get it. When you’re on campus, though, Google may provide you with a link to it through the library.


• Publicly-Accessible Journals and Clearing Houses
  The way peer-reviewed, scientific articles are being published is changing and slowly becoming more accessible to the general public (i.e., those without access to a college library). This means you and your practice can continue to benefit from much of the latest innovations and breakthroughs after you graduate. The above link goes to a small collection of portals to access this information outside of college libraries.


• Citation Guides
  Guides to correct APA (and other) style


• EBSCO Search Tutorial
  Video explaining how to conduct advanced searches


• Psychology Guides
  Encyclopedia of terms and concepts as well as other guides to psychology and development


• Reworks
  Online service that can store and manage resources

---

This website, created 2007 – present by William Ellery Samuels, Ph.D., is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.