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Hi everyone! I'm so happy to be your personal librarian for this course. I'm here to help you with your research - so if you are having trouble picking a topic, finding articles, formatting your paper, or citing your sources, etc.......
I share online office hours with my fellow librarians, so if you'd like some one-on-one help finding resources, click here to book an appointment (if none of these times work for you, let me know and we will do our best to meet at your convenience). Otherwise, please email with any questions. I'm happy to help!
Kelly Faulkner | kfaulkner@jwu.edu | 401-598-2466
Search databases from the library homepage
- Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
- A great place to start for most topics
- Mostly full-text articles from scholarly peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, popular magazines, and newspapers
- If full-text is not available, click link to Check for Full Text (Providence) to connect to Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request form
- PsycARTICLES (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
- APA PsycARTICLES is distributed by different vendors; this version is from EBSCO
- APA PsycINFO is not the same as APA PsycARTICLES. Each has different content. JWU library does not subscribe to APA PsycINFO.
- DSM 5-TR Manual This link opens in a new window
- Provides access to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR)
- Access to the DSM 5-TR Handbook of Differential Diagnosis
- DSM 5-TR Clinical Cases
- Access to the Spanish Edition of the Desk Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria from DSM 5-TR
- SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new window
- Full-text peer-reviewed journal articles from 1999-TO THE CURRENT YEAR
- Content covers fields such as Administration & Leadership, Business/Management, Clothing & Textiles, Criminal Justice, Cultures, Education, Entrepreneurship, Food Science, Hospitality, Information Science, Literature, Marketing, Sports, Travel & Tourism
The library's databases rely on a method of searching called Boolean logic. It is a system of showing the relationship between ideas using the operators "AND," "OR," and "NOT." This logic is recognized by many searching tools as a way to define a search string.
Using the operators
AND is used to to search a set of two or more related ideas. So, if you want to look for articles that contain both the words or concepts fishery and harvest, you would search for that string.
- Use AND to narrow your search
- AND shows the overlap between two concepts
For example, my search for "fishery and harvest" returned over 2,000 results, which is too many for me to browse through. So, I had to think another aspect of the topic I was interested in. When I changed my search string to "fishery and harvest and bioindicators," the number of results became more manageable.
OR is used when there are synonyms of a term that may appear in relevant articles. Searching, for example, reindeer or caribou will cast the widest net for seraching.
- Use OR to broaden your search
NOT eliminates a term from your search. If, for instance, your initial search for "fishery and harvest" returns mostly articles about salmon, and you are not interested in that particular fish, you can search "fishery and harvest not salmon."
Publication Date
The databases will allow you a variety of options to refine your results, typically on the left hand side of your results page. Pay attention to these and especially consider limiting your results by their publication date. Chances are, you do not want articles written more than a few years ago.
Explicit Search
If you are searching for content about, for instance, higher education, consider that this is actually a phrase (consisting of more than one word), and search for it explicitly using quotation marks. As in, "higher education."
Truncation
In many cases, there will be multiple suffixes to a single root word that you'd like to search. Most databases allow the * to be used in place of the ending for a word in order to capture all forms.
For example, a search for "nation*" will return all forms of the word - including nations, national, nationalism, nationalistic, etc.
Avoid adding the plural "s" to a word where possible, and use the truncation symbol when you search should allow for multiple forms of your search terms.
If you use the library's databases for your research, you can copy and paste pre-generated citations - look out for the option as it may appear differently in each interface but is generally represented by an icon of quotation marks.
If you need to cite a resource not located in a database, I recommend using the OWL as a reference. Alternatively, reach out to me for help with citations!
