There are a variety resources and helpful information to support your research on the left side. Be sure to check out the Evaluating Sources tab in addition to the tabs focused on Primary and Secondary sources. On this page you will find ways to get individual help from a librarian and general searching tips when using library databases.
Please feel free to reach out to Claire if you need help with your research at any point during the process, my contact info is on the left hand side of the guide. I am happy to either meet with you in person or virtually or provide support via email.
Ask for help at the Library North service desk in person, using Ask Us chat on the Help and Answers support page, or by phone (404-413-2800).
If you are searching in library databases, it's important to remember that they speak a different language than a search engine like Google. When you are searching a library database you should use keywords to capture the main ideas of your research and Boolean Operators to connect them. An important thing to remember when researching with databases is that it might take multiple searches using different combinations of keywords to get the results you want.
Keywords can be pulled directly from your thesis statement and ideally capture all of the important aspects of your research question or idea. For example, if you are researching the Black Panther Party school lunch programs and how the community felt about them, some keywords you could try are "Black Panther Party", "school lunch", "community". It is recommended to use at least 2 keywords to make your search specific enough to find relevant resources. Putting a set of words in "quotations" tells the database to find all of those words together.
Check out the infographic and description below to help you effectively use Boolean to connect your keywords and build you searches!
As stated above, it might take multiple searches to get results that work for you. If you have too many results, you may get overwhelmed and have a hard time filtering out what is useful. If that happens, try adding another keyword using AND.
Unlike using Google, when searching in a library database sometimes the best resources to help you with your research are not in the first few results. Be sure to explore your results, even going pasted the first page because the perfect article might be deeper in your results!
Google Scholar can be a great tool in addition to the library databases when doing research. While you have a higher chance of being able to access a resource when using a library database over Google Scholar and library databases have more tools to help you refine your search, it can be helpful to search to find additional resources. The steps below will help you connect your GSU credentials to Google Scholar so you can see which articles you have access to through the library.
Once you have set this library link up, you should see "Find it @GSU" next to articles that the library has access to and you should click on that to be redirected to the full text access available through library resources.
First, you may still be able to get access the article you are interested in through the library, but you need to fill out an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request through ILLiad. ILL is a service provided by the library where we source an article from an other institution on your behalf. If you cannot get an article that you would like to read on Google Scholar, click where it says "Cite" below the information about the article on the search results screen. That will give you the full citation information you need to fill out the the ILLiad form.
