Locate Academic Journals in Leatherby Libraries

While there are libguides available to you on Leatherby Libbraries I thought I might create a step by step for using the Leatherby Libraries. First step of course would be Googling Leatherby libraries which should take you to this site. 

From this site you would select General Databases at the bottom of the screen which would take you to this site, electronic resources.

For this assignment we could select Academic Search Premier. You will have multiple databases at your disposal but for this assignment we will use this database which contains information on multiple subjects. Academic Onefile is also another good choice.

The next screenshot will show you the start of Academic Search Premier. 

We have multiple tools at our disposal to narrow down are search. Start by writing in your topic. For this example I selected social work I also checked the box on the bottom left for full text articles (see arrow) so the documents found will be all in full text rather than abstracts (short summaries of an article).

In toolbar to the left as you press search make note of some of the other ways to change your search results. Source Types: Book reviews magazine etc, if that is helpful to you do not have to change anything but you might want to just check the box for Academic Journals so the articles will be all journals rather than a book review about your topic.
Publication Date: There is a slider bar on the left to select documents just within a specific time period. For your research you may wish to select documents within the last 14 years. Although this is not a requirement. Finding different ways to narrow your search results will help in locating an article tailored to your topic quicker. 

Geography: Many articles will display from various countries, if that is important to your work you may wish to leave this, if not you have the option to find articles just related to research in the United States.

If all goes well with your search an academic databases will give you a thousand of results or hundreds of results or even less. A good database search should pull records specifically tailored to your topic. A google search for social work would generate a little over a billion results. That is a lot of information to sort through. 

Hope this helps

Mr. Mac :)