Research Guides: Liberal Studies 495: Finding Resources

Search Tips

Penfield Library. (2014. February 3). Basic Boolean [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXdgsr2Lurc

Boolean Operators (And, Or, Not)

AND
Use to connect dissimilar terms

inclusion AND "academic achievement"

OR
Use to search synonyms or related terms

primary OR elementary

“Second Language Acquisition” OR “English Second Language”

NOT
Use to eliminate a term

cloning NOT sheep

Other useful tips

Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase or name:

"classroom management"
"Race to the Top"
"Tom Torlakson "

Truncation

Use a symbol (typically *) to look for variant endings of a word

teach* will search for teaches, teacher, teaching, etc.

Recommended Databases

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Provides full text for over 2,940 scholarly publications including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, health sciences, and ethnic studies.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
ERIC, the Educational Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources. The database provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. The database contains more than 1,194,000 records and links to more than 100,000 full-text documents from ERIC.
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Education Source is designed to meet the needs of education students, professionals and policy makers. The collection provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,850 academic periodicals and includes full text for more than 1,800 journals, 550 books and monographs, education-related conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
A digital library containing high-quality reference books from the world's leading publishers. Offers access to millions of entries and contains all types of reference books including dictionaries and encyclopedias, covering science to Shakespeare.
Ulrich's Periodical Directory This link opens in a new window
Provides publication information for magazines, journals, newsletters, newspapers, and other periodicals. Coverage is international in scope

Recommended Journals

Find Books at USD & Our Partners

Search our Catalog for books, videos, and other items.

If a book is not available at USD there are two options:

Circuit
This is a combined catalog for USD, SDSU, UCSD, CSU San Marcos and San Diego County Public Libraries. If you find the book you need in the Circuit you can simply make an online request and have the book delivered to USD.
Interlibrary Loan
If a book is not available through the Circuit, or if USD does not have access to a particular article, you can make an interlibrary loan request. ILLiad is the electronic system you use to request an item through Interlibrary Loan. To make a request, simply log in with your MySanDiego username and password.