To search for a phrase, use quotation marks, e.g. "Iraq War"
To search for words with the same root or trunk, use an asterisk * (truncation symbol): romantic* will find "romantic," "romanticism," "romantically," etc.
To combine multiple search terms, use the Boolean operators AND, OR, or NOT:
AND - finds records with all of your search terms
OR - finds records with one term or the other, or both terms
NOT - finds records that include the first term, but not the second
A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary, full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, plus indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals.
Academic Search Complete is a general database provided by the vendor EBSCOhost. This database provides a lot of full text, and it is a good starting place for researching a variety of topics. The database covers both academic journals and popular magazines, books (good for finding book chapters), and newspapers.
During your time at Knox, you will notice that many databases we have are provided by the same vendor. Remember that while these databases my look similar, they each contain different content and provide slightly different search and limiting capabilities.
Academic Search Complete defaults to an advanced search, which allows you to search multiple keywords or to combine different types of search terms.
After entering your search terms, you can also choose to limit your search with various options. There are multiple limit options, including limiting to scholarly journals, a particular document or publication type, a date range, etc.
Analyzing Results
After you've performed your search, you'll get a results list that will give you information like article title, author, source information, subject headings, etc.:
This example is also available as a PDF through the database, so you can click the PDF Full Text link to access the article.
If you click the title of any article, you'll get more information, including an abstract. Abstracts are summaries that can be used to determine if the article relates to your research topic.
Forming New Searches
If you find an article that really relates to your research topic, try using some of the subjects assigned to it to form new searches for other relevant material. Using the example above, I may want to create a new search for items with the subjects <Muslim women> and <legal status>:
Collecting Citations
As you search within the database, you'll probably perform multiple searches and find numerous articles that you'd like to keep. You can use a Bibliographic Management software like Zotero to help manage and create citations for your sources. To learn about using Zotero, check out our Bibliographic Management Research Guide.
You can also view our Citing Sources Research Guide for help with your citations. If you need help with citations or searching for articles, don't hesitate to ask a librarian.
