Academic Search Complete provides full-text access to over 5,000 journals and magazines, including many peer-reviewed articles, plus many Associated Press videos covering a wide range of academic disciplines.
Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text provides comprehensive coverage for research in social justice and criminology, featuring full-text access to leading journals and magazines on topics such as forensic sciences, corrections, policing, and criminal law.
EBSCO eBook: Academic Collection features a vast library of eBooks across diverse academic disciplines. Access thousands of titles from top publishers and university presses for research and learning.
EBSCO Discovery Service provides a single search interface to explore a wide range of research databases, including full-text journal articles, eBooks, and catalog records.
ERIC database provides comprehensive access to full-text journal articles and research materials in education, covering topics such as teaching methods, curriculum development, educational policy, and administration.
EBSCO Full Text Finder provides access to journals and e-books through an advanced knowledge base and link resolver, integrated with EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS).
Access over 30,000 films, including independent and documentary titles that address important social and cultural issues. Featuring renowned collections such as The Criterion Collection and The Great Courses, Kanopy is an invaluable resource for your studies and research.
The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) provides detailed information on criminal justice and drug-related topics, supporting research, policy formulation, and program development.
NewsBank offers full-text access to over 8,000 news publications from nearly 200 countries, including major national and international newspapers as well as local and regional sources for a broad perspective on global and local news.
The Philadelphia Inquirer provides full-text access to current and archived articles, delivering extensive coverage of news, features, and events from Philadelphia and the surrounding area.
SIRS Issues Researcher provides in-depth analysis of key social issues with diverse viewpoints from over 2,000 global sources, offering comprehensive coverage of current debates and research.
Violence & Abuse Abstracts offers comprehensive coverage of research on violence and abuse, including family violence, sexual assault, and emotional abuse, providing detailed studies and discussions on these critical issues.
Choose your words
Keywords are descriptive words or important concepts. Search using just keywords rather than full sentences.
Omit words like "the", "a", "are", "it" from the search. Most databases do not search for these words and they can impact the search results.
Identify keywords from your background research.
Brainstorm synonyms for keywords and search all possible concepts.
Look up your keywords in the database Subject Headings or Thesaurus section to determine if you are using the correct phrase or spelling.
Put quotation marks around phrases to retrieve results with the exact phrase ("mouse and rat")
The asterisk (*) wildcard, also known as the truncation wildcard, is generally used to find word endings. (Metaboli* will find results with metabolism, metabolic, metabolite, metabolites, metabolizing, and metabolically)
Improve Search Results by Connecting Keywords with Boolean Logic
Boolean (pronounced BOO-lee-an) are connectors between search terms. They can be used to make sophisticated searches. They are used to combine different concepts, combine similar concepts or eliminate concepts. Boolean uses three simple terms, AND, OR, NOT.
Use AND to retrieve results with both concepts (mouse AND rat)
Use OR to retrieve either keyword (mouse OR rat)
Use NOT to omit a keyword (mouse NOT rat)
The areas shaded in black represent the database search results when using a specific Boolean Operator between two keywords.
Cecelia Vetter, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Focus Results with Limiters
Full Text will limit results to articles with full text.
Peer Reviewed limits results to articles from peer-reviewed journals.
Scholarly Journals limits results to articles from academic publishers of both "peer-reviewed" and not "peer-reviewed" journals intended for an academic audience.
Date Published can be used to limit results to a specified date range.
Harcum College
Login
