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Welcome to the International Student Workshop on Finding Articles Using
Welcome to the International Student Workshop on Finding Articles Using
the MU Articles Databases and Google Scholar. In this tutorial
I’m going to cover some general information about databases and scholarly articles
I’ll also explain some of the features of Google Scholar and a library
research tool called Search and Find. We will then cover a little bit about
building a search strategy. For more information on search strategy,
Academic Search Complete, and identifying subject specific databases, be sure to
check out the second part of this session. So what can you expect
to learn in this session. We are going to cover a number of things. These include identifying
databases relevant to a research topic. Understanding how to use
Boolean Operators, knowing where to find database help,
understanding the differences between scholarly and popular materials, understanding
how to refine a search using limiters, knowing how to search google scholar,
and knowing how to get articles. We are going to talk about databases
a lot in these videos. So what are databases?
Databases are basically places online where information is stored.
The information in a database could be articles, newspapers, portions of books,
entire books, or images. Article databases, which are what
we are going to focus on for this session, may contain the full text of articles
or they may only contain citations. The MU Libraries
provide access to over 660 databases through our gateway page
that you, as students, can freely access from here on campus or anywhere that you have an
internet connection, such as your home or favorite coffee shop.
These include many multidisciplinary and subject specific databases that are
rich in important scholarly information.
So you have been given a research assignment and your professor has stated that you need to use
scholarly sources. So what exactly are scholarly sources?
Scholarly articles are different from magazine and newspaper articles,
which are often geared towards the general public. Scholarly resources
are typically written by academic researchers or experts
in a field. They are typically found in peer reviewed journals.
A peer reviewed journal is one that uses subject experts to judge the quality
of the research being done. Reviewing the content of these journals is typically part
of a professor’s job. There is an excellent handout
available on the research guide for these sessions, and it gives a lot of additional information
for determining whether a resource is scholarly or not.
If your ever unsure about whether a resource is scholarly, feel free to stop by the reference
desk in Ellis Library or to contact your professor.
They librarians are happy to help you evaluate your resources.
Now that you know what scholarly articles are, how do you find them? There are a few
different ways that you can go about this. The tools that I am going to cover are Google
Scholar and Search and Find. Both are really great places to get started
on research. This is especially true if you have a very broad topic
that you need to narrow down since these are multidisciplinary resources that cover
many subject areas. The first tool that I am going to talk about is Google
Scholar. Google Scholar is a freely available search engine that
indexes scholarly literature from a variety of sources. This is
a multidisciplinary database that allows you to search for materials from a wide variety
of academic disciplines. It has a very simple user interface
that is nearly identical to the interface on the commonly used Google search engine.
This is a tool that searches a number of different types of materials at
one time. These materials include articles, abstracts, books,
theses, patents and legal documents. An important thing
to remember about Google Scholar is that it searches the World Wide Web for scholarly resources.
It does not search the library’s holdings so the library may not
have access to everything that you find on Google Scholar.
Also, because Google Scholar searches the web you may come across things like student research
papers that would not be appropriate sources for you to use.
You should carefully scrutinize the resources that you come across to be sure that they
are appropriate scholarly resources. If you are unsure about a source feel
free to stop by the reference desk at Ellis Library or contact your professor.
So how do you find Google Scholar? There are a couple of ways to get to it.
You can access it freely on the web at scholar.google.com,
or you can access it through the libraries’ website by clicking the databases link on the
homepage and then clicking the Try First tab. If you scroll down you will see Google
Scholar on the list of general databases. You can use
Google Scholar by searching with the basic search box, or there are more advanced options
under the drop down menu. If you decide to access
Google Scholar directly from the web , you will need to make sure that you set the FindIt@MU
preferences. FindIt@MU links
links allow you to locate articles that you find on Google Scholar in the
MU Library System. These links often direct you to electronic
versions of articles that we have access to. To set up
your FindIt@MU preferences use the gear link on the right side of the screen. Then select Library
Links on the left and type “University of Missouri” into the search box.
Check the box labeled “University of Missouri-Findit@MU” and click “save”.
Keep in mind that when you access Google Scholar through the MU
Libraries gateway page you do not need to set up the FindIt@MU preferences.
To access Google Scholar through the gateway, use the databases link located in the
Search and Find tab and type Google Scholar. Or use the Try First: Resources for Research
link which can also be found located on the databases page.
Search and Find is the second tool I want
to talk about. It is sort of like a library version of Google.
This a tool that searches the MERLIN Catalog and several library databases at once.
It retrieves many different types of resources including journal articles,
books, audio formats and dissertations. You can use it
it to find citations for, or the full text of, scholarly materials that the library owns
or provides access to. This tool works best with natural language searching
so just type in your question the same way that you would if searching with an Internet search
engine.
You can search Search and Find
by using the single search box located at the center of the gateway page to start.
. From there you can refine your search using the options on the left hand side of the screen.
The options on the left side of the screen
allow you to limit your search results a number of ways. Checking the box
labeled “Scholarly Publications/Peer Review” will ensure that you only get articles
from scholarly journals. The “Content Type” limiter allows you to limit
your search to only journal articles or only books.
The “Date” limiter allows you to limit your results to articles published before or
after a certain date. This is especially helpful if your assignment
requires you to use articles from a certain date. Professors often ask
for resources that were published in the last 10 years.
The “Language” limiter allows you to limit your search results to articles that
are written in a specific language. This is a great option if you are more
comfortable reading in another language, but be aware that using this feature may cause relevant
articles to be excluded from your results. Search and Find allows
allows you to change its default language to the Language of your choosing by using the drop
down menu on the top right hand side of the screen. It is
important to note that this drop down menu changes the language of the search
interface. It does not change the language of any results that you may recieve.
Next we a going to talk a little bit about building a search strategy.
We have just covered a couple of resources
that work really well with natural language searching, so you may
be wondering whey we need to thing about search strategy. Many of
our databases, unfortunately, do not work well with natural language and require
you to use key terms along with connectors for effective searching.
In order to get the best results your are going to want to
look at your research question and pull out the key concepts in that question,
and then look for synonyms for each of those key concepts.
After that you will build a search statement and then do a search in a database, then refine
those searches if necessary. For more information on building
a search strategy please see the next video in the International Students Workshop.
I want to conclude this session by making you
aware of some of the help options that are available for you here at MU Libraries.
You can either click the Contact Us link on the right side of
the home page or you can click the Ask MU Libraries link
located on the left side of the homepage. Both of these links
will direct you to a page where you can find information about
all of the different ways that you can access help at the MU Libraries.
We have a reference desk that is staffed from 8:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. most nights of the week.
We also offer chat service, email service, text reference
service. You can also make an appointment for a Research
Assistance Program consultation. Please feel free to contact us if you need any
help with your research question. We look forward to hearing from you!