It is usually a good idea to start out broadly, so using just one or two of your topic terms is a good way to begin. Once you have a set of results, you can begin narrowing down your results by entering one or more terms. Searching in a specific field such as "Subject" or "Title" will narrow or focus your results.
Truncation Finds Multiple Word Forms
The asterisk (*) is usually used to search words with the same root:
Person* = Personal, Personality, Personable, etc.
Wildcard symbols (usually a ‘?’) replace a single letter:
Wom?n = Woman, Women
Using Library Databases to Find Articles: To locate articles using Library databases, you can click on Databases from the Library homepage and browse by subject or you can select the first letter of the database name. Since we have more than 130 databases, listed below are some of the databases you may find useful to locate communication and media related articles.
Statista The Statista database is a portal to statistical information, pulling together data on over 80.000 topics from over 18.000 sources onto a single platform.
Once you locate a few good articles on your topic, be sure to review the references to other articles that are cited. This is a great way to locate related research articles on your topic. Many databases also provide a link to these articles if they are available electronically. If you don't find a link, be sure to check the Library's Journals A-Z List to see if it's available, If not, you can always use our awesome Interlibrary Loan Service.
