As you advance in your major here at SUU, you will likely be required to do some in-depth research on a topic that is relevant to your discipline. SUU Library has close to two hundred individual databases for students to choose from. Some databases are general, containing a little bit of everything. Others are specialized and contain only information sources relevant to a specific discipline, such as biology. Depending on what you are researching, you will need to know how to get to the database that is most likely to contain relevant sources. Watch the two videos below to see different ways to identify and access the databases you need.
The easiest way to access any of the databases is to go to the Find a Database link under the Find section on the Library’s homepage (suu.edu/library). Clicking this link brings you to the databases page that lists all our databases in alphabetical order in the A-Z list.
You can browse the A-Z list or select the letter your database starts with. For example, selecting W from the list would be a quick way to find Wall Street Journal. Or you can type the name of a database or keyword in the Search Here Title/Keyword box.
To get to the discipline specific databases, where you can browse databases by subject and type, use the drop down boxes at the top to filter by Subject. For example, if your discipline is Psychology, you could use the filter to narrow the list to the Psychology databases.
The example below is the list of Nursing databases, chosen from the list of subjects. You might notice that some general databases are still listed as one of the options, because they do cover nursing.
Subject Guides (sometimes called LibGuides) are pages curated by librarians on a particular subject. On a subject page you can find databases recommended by the librarians as well as other print and internet resources that are especially helpful for a particular discipline. There will also be contact information for the subject librarian if you need further, discipline-specific assistance.
The great thing about getting to know one database is that other databases, though they may look different, behave in a similar manner. You might also notice that databases published by the same vendor are going to look very similar. All of the ProQuest databases will look pretty much the same, and the same for all of the Gale and EBSCO databases. But even across vendors, databases work similarly, so you will be able to transfer your database search skills to other databases.
Most databases will have a search bar on their home screen, as well as a link to the advanced search screen. Advanced search will typically have multiple search bars (with the option to add more as needed) connected by built-in drop-down Boolean operators.
Whether you stick with the basic search, or use the advanced search, you can enter all your search terms in the first bar, separated by the Boolean operators. If you use the advanced search bar options which have the Boolean operators built in, it’s best to keep the built in operators with AND, and then use each search bar to group synonyms together using OR, or to add on a NOT operator as needed. The multiple search bars are nice to use, especially if your search gets long and complicated, because it can help you see all the components of your search statement at once.
After you have entered in your search statement, press enter or click the Search button. Next, you will see your search results, where you can browse through articles and learn more about your topic, and find clues such as keywords and phrases to revise your original search statement. Searching is trial and error and it may take several iterations to find the sources you need.
You can learn a lot from your search by looking at the number of results. This is an important tactic, because you won't necessarily find everything you need from one search. You will want to look at how many results you get right away to see if your search is focused enough. Unlike Google, where you commonly have millions or results, if you have thousands of results when searching the databases, it can mean that your search is too broad and you need to focus your search statement more. You could do this by adding another keyword (using the Boolean operator AND), switching out a keyword, or adjusting your use of the OR operator. It also might mean you need to use the filters to narrow your results further (see section on Filters below).
If you get fewer than 10 results, your search statement is likely too narrow or focused. This could be because of your keyword choice, or maybe you are using too many keywords combined with AND, which will always narrow your search. It might also be a good idea to add some synonyms for some of your keywords. Play around with your search statements and Boolean operators to find a combination that has a better number of results.
Finally, you could be searching in a database that doesn’t have much on your topic in which case you could also try a different database. For suggestions as to what database to use or which keywords, you can ask a librarian at the Reference Desk or use the Chat with a Librarian or text option.
Also, check the relevance of your results. You could get a perfect ballpark range of results, but if the sources aren’t really about your topic, or if they are all popular press publications (i.e. only magazines and newspapers) then your search is still not fully working. Don’t give up at this point, but simply learn from your results and try another search approach with different keywords or a different tactic with your Boolean operators. Searching is trial and error. Again, librarians are there to help you with this if you need it.
As you are reviewing your results, look at the words used in the titles and abstracts of the results. These words are potential keywords that you can use to refine your search and make your results more relevant. These words capture the specialized terminology that scholars are using, and can give you ideas to revise your initial search and keywords.
If you continue having trouble finding the information you need, reach out to one of the librarians on the Reference Desk, or chat with a librarian online.
To narrow down your results, you can also use the filters (usually on the left sidebar) to make your results even more relevant.
Most databases will have filters to limit your results by source type, date, and whether the articles are full text or peer reviewed, etc. These filters can be helpful for narrowing down a relevant search to the exact type of source and time period you need. Since most professors will require specific types of sources, knowing how to filter and get the types of sources you need simplifies the process.
For example, a search for dogs AND "mental health" AND "college students" in Psychology Database (a ProQuest Database) yielded over 5,000 results, way more than anyone has time to look through. Adding another keyword might help, but checking the source type filter shows thousands of results that you won’t need. By excluding those results, or only including the types you want to use in your research, the number is dropped down to around 2,000 instead. Using the source type filter is a good start for refining your search.
1,640 results is still a lot, but it does make the search more manageable. You can then continue to use other tactics, such as another keyword or filter, to narrow our results and to a manageable and relevant collection.
Another filter you could use is the Publication date filter, maybe setting your range to the last few years.
The Subject filter can be helpful in refining your topic and helping you find keywords. The subject filter acts like a list of subject headings (which are the approved keywords of databases similar to hashtags in social media) that you can choose from to essentially add another keyword to your search via a filter.
