Tips for Finding Articles

Tip #1: Know Your Building Blocks

• Databases work with keywords. Combine the keywords for your specific topic or subtopic. Experiment with keywords to find the ones that scholars are using in their articles. 

• Limit the results to only what you need (scholarly, date range, etc.) using filters. Some databases, have extra filters like "primary source document," "gender," or "age."

Tip #2: Abstracts/Summaries

• The abstract will give you a good idea of what the article is about. Read over the abstract, since titles can be misleading.

Tip #3: Reference Lists are Your New Best Friend

• An author of an article has already done a bunch of research, take a look at their reference list for keyword ideas or search the title a listed article in OneSearch to see if we have access to it. 

Tip #4: Subject Terms for Narrow But Relevant Results

• From an article's information, you can get more ideas for different keywords for the subject terms listed above the abstract. Click on one of those terms to see all the articles labeled with that subject heading term. Remember to redo your filters.

• Subject headings are carefully chosen list of labels that are attached to an article to describe what it is mostly about. The subject term used describe a concept is carefully chosen and databases will have a "thesaurus" or "word bank" for you to search a keyword to find out the correct subject term to use.

Citing Your Sources

Don't forget to cite the article to avoid plagiarism!

Most databases will have a "cite" tool that generates the citation in the citation style you need, such as AMA (JAMA), APA, etc. The library also has citation manuals for the most popular citation styles available in the catalog.