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This bibliographic and full text database covers scholarly research and information relating to all areas of education, including early childhood through higher education, multilingual education, health education, testing, curriculum instruction, administration, policy, funding, and related social issues.
You can also use OneSearch to find scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles by entering key terms and then limiting your search to that "Peer-reviewed Journals." However, you may also want to search databases individually, in order to limit the results you get to only academic journal articles. Searching by individual databases also allows you to use metadata (information about your article) in order to efficiently find more related items.
|
Boolean Operator |
OR |
AND |
NOT |
| Why you do it |
Link keywords related to a single concept |
Link different concepts | Exclude certain search terms |
| What it does | Linking with OR broadens a search (increases the number of results) by searching for any of the alternative keywords | Linking with AND narrows a search (reduces the number of results) by retrieving only those records that include all of your specified keywords | Using NOT narrows a search by excluding certain search terms |
| Example | chocolate OR cacao | chocolate AND health | chocolate NOT candy |
For phrase searching, place two or more words in "inverted commas" or "quote marks".
Example: “chocolate chip cookies”
In some databases, words may be searched separately if the quote marks are not used. In other databases, word order may be maintained without the need for quote marks.
| Symbol |
* |
? |
| What it does | An asterisk applied to the root of a word (truncation) captures other endings to that root word. | A question mark applied in a word (wildcard) replaces one or more characters in the middle of a word. |
| Why you use it | Useful for retrieving singular, plural and other variations of a keyword. | Useful if word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning. |
| Example |
child* will give you:
|
wom?n will give you:
|
Many databases provide many different types of articles. You can narrow your search with limits. Adding a limit to a search will exclude certain material not relevant to your research question, and therefore reduce the number of results.
Examples include:
The use of limits should be justified by the focus of your research and any constraints.
Many databases use subject headings to organize content. These are generally selected from a controlled list by experienced people and describe what the article is about.
A comprehensive search strategy is often best achieved by using a combination of keywords and subject headings where possible.
In-depth knowledge of subject headings is not required for users to benefit from improved search performance using them in their searches.
Advantages of subject searching:
Note: Subject headings are often unique to a particular database, so you will need to look for appropriate subject headings in each database you intend to use.
Subject headings are not available for every topic, and it is best to only select them if they relate closely to your area of interest.
Do you use Google Scholar? Make it more effective by linking it to the Library and gaining access to our subscriptions.
Go to Google Scholar. Click on the Hamburger icon to view Settings, then Library Links in the left-hand column. Check the box next to "Sonoma State University" and save. Your search results will now include a Find It@SSU link. Click on Find It for full-text articles available from the SSU Library.
Hamburger icon > Settings
Library links
Did you know Seawolves can borrow books, media, and articles from other libraries for free? Watch the short video below to learn how to request items from other libraries using OneSearch.