Research Essentials

A General Guide to Research: how to research, where to look for sources, how to evaluate work, and where to get research help in the Iona University Libraries.

Introduction

Iona University Libraries subscribe to over 200 online research databases. These databases are accessible both on and off-campus and contain scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journals, magazines, and newspapers, as well as streaming videos.

Many articles found in our subscription databases are not accessible by searching on a commercial search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo.

This page provides tips and shortcuts for effectively searching the library catalog and databases. Searching the catalog is a trial-and-error process, so use the tools on this page to translate your ideas from human language to database language.

Selecting a Database

Reference Databases: Reference Databases provide useful, encyclopedic overviews of topics. They are particularly useful for developing a research question from your chosen topic.
Multidisciplinary Databases: Multidisciplinary Databases cover many subjects and are a good starting point if your topic is broad or you are not sure where to start your research.
Subject Specific Databases: Subject Specific Databases are specialized databases and cover the full range of disciplines in the Iona curriculum. They are useful when you have narrowed down your topic to a specific subject.
News and Current Events Databases: News and Current Event Databases include newspaper and magazine databases, and several other databases covering current and controversial issues. In addition to these database offerings, you are eligible for a free digital subscription to the New York Times while you are an Iona student. Follow the instructions on the The New York Times Academic Pass to activate your account.

eBook Databases: eBook Databases include both multidisciplinary and subject specific eBook databases.
Video Databases: Video Databases include both multidisciplinary and subject specific video databases.
Primary Source Databases: Primary Source Databases include a range of primary source materials and documents across broad historical and geographic scopes.

If you still haven't found relevant resources, reflect on the research steps. Where are you in your research process? What sort of sources do you need for your assignment or for better understanding your topic?

The Credo video Choosing a Database describes in greater detail how to choose a database that appropriately matches your assignment and research needs.

Searching Techniques

AND, OR, NOT are Boolean connectors, used to show the relationship between two or more keywords.

The following graphic helps visualize what each Boolean operator does:

Image of three concentric circles representing the AND, OR, and NOT Boolean Operator

Image from: Duke University Libraries “Using the Library: Library Catalog Searching Tips.” https://library.duke.edu/using/catalog-search-tips/expert

Online Research: Tips for Effective Search Strategies (Video)

AND narrows your search, telling the database that you are looking for sources about both of your two keywords.

If you are looking for sources about how racially biased hiring practices affect career advancement, you could search for:

"racial discrimination" AND "career advancement"

To ensure that you only find sources about both phrases.

OR broadens your search.

In searching, OR means more and retrieves more results. OR is useful when you are searching using synonyms. OR is also useful for broadening your search: if you are researching renewable energy but having trouble finding results, you can search for specific kinds of renewable energy with the following OR search:

“wind energy” OR “nuclear energy” OR “solar energy”

The results retrieved will not necessarily have all your terms in the same article when you use OR.

NOT excludes a word from your search results and is useful if you find that your search terms are pulling up specific irrelevant results.

If you are writing about universal health care, but the catalog understands “universal” to mean the Milky Way galaxy, use the following NOT search:

“universal health care” NOT Mars

all the results will contain the first phrase but not the second phrase.

By using the asterisk (*) symbol, you can search simultaneously for words that begin with the same letters or have the same root. * takes the place of any number of characters following the root letters. This allows you to conduct multiple searches with just one search.

legal* finds:

legal

legalize

legalized

legalization

legality

legalities

Quick Tips for Database Searching

The video below introduces a few database searching tools that this page expands on:

Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides a simple way to search for relevant scholarly information across many disciplines and sources, such as articles, books, theses, and court opinions, from academic publishers, universities, and other websites.

While Google Scholar contains articles accessible on the open web, occasionally the full text of the article is only available with database subscriptions. If you are on-campus, you will see a link titled “Find Full Text @ Iona” to the right of the article title.

To access articles from databases Iona University Libraries subscribes to off-campus:

Go to Settings
Click on Library Links
Type in Iona University

This FAQ outlines how to access full texts from Iona University Libraries databases while off-campus.

Field Searching

Search results in the library and database searches pull up records for resources. A record contains fields describing the item - like title, author, or DOI number. You can search the catalog by field with an Advanced Search, using the drop-down menu "Search Index" located to the right of the search bar to limit your search to fields including Author, Journal Source, Keyword, Subject, and Title.

You can also tell the catalog what sort of field searching you need by using the following shortcuts in the search bar on the library homepage:

Au: for searching by author. If you are looking for a book by Miguel Piñero, your search would look like “au:Miguel Piñero”
Kw: for keyword searching. If you are searching for resources about postcolonial Ghanian politics, your search would look like “kw:Ghana politics postcolonial.”
Su: for subject searching. If you are searching for resources about trade agreements between China and India, your search would look like “su:India China trade agreement"
Ti: for title searching. If you are looking for the book Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, your search would look like “ti:working-class hollywood silent film and the shaping of class in america"

After initiating the search, use the filters and limits in the left-column of the search results page to narrow your results, limiting to peer-review, specific date ranges, or full-text only for example.