Class Guide Repository

The display above is a locally adjusted copy of the BrowZine search tool. It has been created to address the accessibility shortcomings of the ones offered on the BrowZine website. There are several ways to get this BrowZine Widget onto your own guide.

1. Map the "Journals" box above.
2. Copy the "Journals" box above.
3. Directly reuse the widget from the Assets list. Instead of adding a Rich Text/HTML, add a Widget and select the tab to Reuse. Search for "BrowZine Journal Search". This is a great method to choose as it will allow you to add additional Rich Text/HTML sections above or below the search form. In the extra sections you could offer suggested keywords for the subject.

Use Search It, our discovery tool, to locate books, articles, music, movies, e-books, and more. The tool returns results that can be refined by:

• peer-reviewed journals
• full-text resources
• topic
• creation date

Watch this overview of using Search It.

Watch this video for a brief overview of refining Search It results. 

Produced by K-State Libraries
Transcript

Below are selected primary sources databases grouped by content type.

News

War

Gender and Race

Operators AND, OR - allow you to combine terms and minimize searches

Use OR for synonyms:

effect  OR  influence OR impact
children OR  youth OR  elementary

This query tells the database that at least one of the words per line must appear in your results.

Use AND to combine terms:

effect  OR  influence OR impact
AND children OR youth OR elementary
 

To understand the concept, click on the image
below to visit the interactive Boolean Machine.

Wildcards and Truncation (*) The asterisk is generally used as a truncation symbol when placed at the end of a word stem.

effect  OR  influence OR impact
AND    child* OR  youth OR  elementary

Be careful not to shorten the word stem so that results are not relevant.  If our example is category, try categ*, instead of cat*, to get category, categories, categorical, etc.

Searching these resources is different from searching the Internet. K-State Libraries pays to subscribe to the databases; they are not found in an online search. Their content is collected and maintained by various companies and organizations.

• Keywords: Before you begin, break your topic into key concepts; think about the terminology/keywords you wish to search for and possible synonyms.
• Subject Headings: Look for "Subject Headings," "Subjects," "Keywords" or "Descriptors" to help narrow your search. Different databases may recognize different terms. As you find these tags, construct your search using the language/terminology of that database. 
• Truncation: Use "truncation" (an asterisk at end of word stem): teen* searches for "teen", "teens", "teenager", "teenagers", etc. by adding all possible endings.
• Wildcard: Use "wildcard" (a quotation mark inside a word): wom?n searches for "women" or "woman".
• Help: When you're in a database, look for its “Help” section.

Advanced Search: Look for the "Guided Search" or "Advanced Search" options so that you have more search boxes.

• AND = both concepts must be present, helps limit the search (Ex. stormwater AND management)
• OR = great for synonyms  (Ex. "universal design" OR "inclusive design")
• NOT = exclude an unrelated term  (Ex. "nigel coates" NOT "book review")

Get It: No full text available? Click on the "Get It" button to search for the article in our database subscriptions. If it's not there, it will look for a print copy available on campus or through Interlibrary Loan.

K-State Libraries subscribe to many databases from ProQuest. You can search almost all of them simultaneously.

1. Enter ProQuest Research Library
2. Click the All Databases link near the top left of the screen.
3. Enter search terms.
4. Set search limits such as full text or peer-reviewed.

Academic OneFile is an enormous database indexing 13,00 journals and covers a wide range of topics.

Tips 

• Use the Advanced Search screen
• Use an asterisk as a wildcard to search for many words at once. For example, homeless* will search for homeless OR homelessness
• Start broadly by searching for only one or two key terms and truncating those terms. Sort results by relevance.
• If you get too few results, try adding other key terms by using the OR connector. For example corn OR maize.

Limiting your search to a journal when you're in a database

Many of our databases will include the citations and abstracts from relevant journals, even if they don't have the full text. You can request copies of the complete article through the Get It button or Interlibrary Loan.

You can use the database Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory to learn what databases cover the journal you want and see if we subscribe to that database by going to our Databases page.

When you know a database covers the journal you want, you may limit your search to just that journal

• Look for Advanced Search 
• Enter the title of the journal in one of the search boxes 
• Click on the option for a specific title, it may be, "Publication Title" or "Source" on the Advanced Search screen
• Click Search

Browsing or searching the full-text of a journal

Get It and Interlibrary Loan mean that you don't have to limit your research to databases that provide the fulltext articles. Still, some researchers follow certain journals and like to browse or otherwise search the fulltext. Here's how.

• Click the E-Journals link from the purple bar along the top of website
• Enter the title of the journal
• If we have access to the full text of the journal, you should see the journal title on an alphabetical list of journals
• Click on the title 
• The Get It window will pop up, telling you what databases cover the journal and (importantly) the dates those databases cover
• Choose the database with the relevant dates
• Most of the time you will be taken to a search screen that already limits your search to that specific journal.