CMST101: Intro to Communication, James: Find Research Articles & Books

• Put phrases in quotes.
• Use OR to combine synonyms:
• Use AND to combine main ideas of your topic/question.
• Truncate (with *) to get all variations of a search term
• Change important search terms to Subjects for narrower and more relevant results

• Start with the Title and the Abstract (or summary) of the article.
• Then scan the Subject Headings to learn what the article’s focus areas are.
• Notice if the type of article matches what you need; don’t get fooled by a book review or editorial.
• See if you have access to the full-text of your chosen article, possibly in another database

You learned how to identify keywords about your topic to search the databases.  Here's a quick database search demo showing some additional tips and tricks.