PHED: Personal Health and Wellness: Research Database Tips

GSU has many research databases, including GALILEO databases. GALILEO is a collection of databases shared by libraries in the state of Georgia.  The Discover tool allows you to search many of these databases and the GSU catalog at one time. It can be a great place to start your research, but aware that it does not include all of GSU's databases.

Try the Discover Search here! If off campus, you will be prompted to enter the GALILEO password.
(You can use Discover without the password from the Library Homepage)

Things you should know about the DISCOVER Tool:

• It includes many formats, including ebooks, articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers, and streaming videos.
• It is a good place for a quick start and for multi-disciplinary research.
• It automatically searches within the full text of articles.
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are optional
• It includes library catalog resources, including books and DVDs.
• Advanced Search allows you to narrow by subject area ("discipline") and easily create complex searches.

Why NOT to use the Discover Search (use individual databases instead):

• To use  CQ Researcher, News & Newspapers and other ProQuest databases and others not included in Discover.
• To use specialized search features in some databases (Examples: databases about literature, business, or medical topics.)
• To limit your search results by...
  • subject (example: Literary Reference Center for literature)
  • format (example: Films on Demand for streaming videos)
  • scope (example: Consumer Health Complete for health articles aimed at non-medical professionals)

 To locate more databases that pertain to your particular topic: 

Sometimes you have a specific journal or article in mind, or your instructor may assign an article.  The simplest thing to do is to look for the title of the article, in quotes, in the Discover search, as shown below...but this doesn't always work.

The more thorough way to do it, is to look at the citation, like this one....

and locate the title of the journal.  It's usually the part in italics. (I've highlighted it in the example above.)

Then go to the Journals tab on the library homepage and search for the journal by title. Be sure to choose if you want e-journals only or all journals (e-journals and print journals).

From the resulting list, choose the title of the journal and you'll see a list of databases that contain that journal. Notice which, if any, include the date of the article you want, and click on the title of the database to search for the article.

From here.....Depending on the database....

• You may need to click on "search within publication" to look within the journal, or use the menu to locate by date.
• You may need to add "AND" and the title of the article or authors to locate the article.
• If you still can't find your article, ask a librarian for help or place an Interlibrary Loan request.