For many assignments you will need to find magazine or periodical articles on a specific topic. This section will lead you through the process of researching a specific topic in our article databases and eventually obtaining the articles you find. This page contains help on "Choosing a Database", "Conducting a Search", "Scholary, Peer-Reviewed or Popular Articles" and "Getting Your Articles".
1) Log on to Off Campus Access from the library's home page here.
2) Go to our database page by clicking on the "Articles and Databases" tab near the top of the home page.
3) You can now go to the "Choosing a Database" box below.
Choosing A Database
We have several ways to find a database. Under the Articles and Databases tab, you'll see links for Most Used, A - Z List and Citation Linker. Most Used is a list of our most used and popular databases. Many of them are considered general databases because they cover all topics. The most popular of these is Academic Search Complete. If you know the name of the database you can use the A-Z List. Once you are in that list, you can also search by keyword. If you already have an article citation (the article title, author name, volume, issue, etc.), you can use the Citation Linker. It will search in most of our databases for the article.
Next on the page is the "Database title or description" search box. If you know any part of the database name or subject area, you can enter those keywords and search here.
The final way to search for potential databases is by subject area. The drop down menu box "or choose your subject here" lists most academic programs by name. Choosing your academic program or major will take you to a list of databases useful to your research area.
Conducting A Search
To conduct a search in any database, you will need to know a few things: your topic, keywords and synonyms for those keywords.and how to use boolean search strategy.
