There are three ways that you can get to the library's databases,
from off-campus (as well as from on-campus):
If you are off campus, when you click the name of a database, you will be asked for your Campus ID and password. After that, you'll have full access to the database*. But in order to get that access, the database has to identify you as GSU faculty/student/staff.
*There are a very few databases that you can't access this way and are only usable in the actual library building). These are clearly marked in the database listings as ON CAMPUS USE ONLY.
**You can also connect Google Scholar to our online article holdings. Click here for more information on setting up this option from off-campus.**
Most databases have an Advanced Search option, which will let you search using multiple terms at once. For example:
An asterisk (*) is a truncation symbol that will bring up results using all the letters leading up to (or following) the * -- so, African American* will bring up both "African American" and "African Americans," and "Black*" will bring up "Black," "Blacks," "Blackness," and so on.
Those ORs mean that you're asking for articles that use any of the terms linked by the "ORs"
* * * * *
A database's Advanced Search option will also let you limit your search in a number of ways, including:
For example, here are some options that often appear in Advanced Search:
Different subject databases may have other options as well, but most of our databases have these as Advanced Search options.
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One box that you SHOULD NOT CHECK is the "Full Text" box. Sounds backwards, I know, but here's why:
Many databases will give you only the citation for a particular article and not the full text.
But! We have lots of databases, and the article that you need may be in a different database.
If you find an article that you want, and it looks like we don't have full text, click the blue "Find It @ GSU" button. That button will point you to the article if it's held in another database, or will help you set up an Interlibrary Loan for the article.
If you check the "Full Text" box in a database, you're actually saying that you only want articles which that particular database has available in "full text." You're shutting off that "Find It @ GSU" option.
The first four databases listed here are probably your best bets for getting started. Since they are all provided to us by the same vendor (EBSCO), you can search across all four of them at the same time. To do this, go into any one of those databases and click on "Choose Databases" 
Then select other EBSCO databases that might be useful from the list that comes up,
All of the databases listed below are EBSCO databases! except for
* * * * * * * * * *
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowProvides indexing and abstracting of international publications in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
APA PsycInfo is unmatched as a resource for locating scholarly research findings in psychology and related fields across a host of academic disciplines.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowA digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It offers an interdisciplinary journal archive across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences
to search names as a phrase | ex: "Colin Kaepernick"
as a wild card | ex: wom*n
AND between words or boxes to NARROW results | ex: media AND "Serena Williams"
OR between words or boxes to EXPAND results | ex: African America* OR Black*
Most articles in databases are assigned one or more subject terms. These are standardized terms that bring together articles on the same topic even if the keywords are different (think "Cassius Clay"* vs. "Muhammad Ali").
*note that there was a 19th-century boxer named Cassius M. Clay who was NOT Muhammad Ali...
When you find a good article, look at its subject terms in the article's record. Follow these to find other items about that topic. Or, combine the subject terms in a new search.
If you know that you are looking for books about a particular athlete or sport, you can try using that name or sport as a subject term, like this:
Adding "Vietnam" as a keyword will limit your search to items about Muhammad Ali (including films!) that mention "Vietnam" somewhere in the item's record -- could be in the title, in a summary or table of contents (if those are included), or as a subject term.
This video includes:
How to complete a search in Academic Search Complete:
This video includes:
How to complete a search in Academic Search Complete:
This video includes:
Note: there was a recording glitch that resulted in a bit of extra video at the end and another glitch when Kaltura refused to edit out the last bit; captions will tell you when the instructional part has ended.
button in the article's record. Clicking this button will check for full text availability in GSU's other databases and also search the library's catalog to see if we have the journal in print or on microfilm. You will see one or more of the following results: 