If your assignment calls for you to find information on technology in schools, you may search for
technology AND schools or "technology in schools"
in a database (to find articles) or in the Library Catalog (to find books). Using quotation marks around the phrase tells the database to search for the words together, as a phrase.
When searching for articles, limit your search to match your search needs.
- For example, if you need scholarly (or peer-reviewed) articles, select the related box on the left side of the screen.
- If you need articles published in the last 5 years, change the dates on the left side of the screen to 2011-2016.
- If you're doing historical research, you can change the dates to find older information. For example, you could change the search dates to 1940-1960 and the database will list all articles published on your topic during that time frame.
- If you need articles on school technology related to economic class, you may want to search for "technology in schools" AND "middle class," etc.
- If you search for technolo* in a database, you will be given articles containing the word(s) technology, technologies, technologist, technological, etc.
- After you press Search, browse through the list of articles provided. Reading abstracts is a good way to know if an article is right for you. Abstracts can be found beneath the title of peer-reviewed articles.
- If you feel overwhelmed by a large number of articles, add another search term to limit results further. You can also click Full text to see only articles available in their entirety.
- Remember: If you don't find what you're looking for in a database, search a different database. Many different databases and ejournals are available to you. You might find only an abstract to an article in one database but a different database might have the full text, so explore all your options.
