Communication Studies 100: Search Tips

Search by keyword directly from the Library home page, or click on Library Catalog in the navigation bar for full search options

• Keyword searches will look for your search term in the subject, title and contents in the full record
• If you aren't getting quality hits, try other keywords -- synonyms of your original search.
• Click on a title on your list and look at the Subject part of the item's record.  The subject terms will help you find similar items.
• Click on one of the subject headings, and get a list of all other materials in the collection with that exact subject heading.

If you do not find many books, try a more general subject heading: 

• Exact subject: National Security – United States – History – Sources
• try: National Security – United States 
• or maybe just: National Security

Other Tips

• If you're finding many books you may want to review, you can save them to a temporary list as you're searching. Select entries that you like by clicking on the “mark” boxes to the left.  Then at the top of the results, under Select an Action, click Add to My Lists.
• To view your list of items, click on My Lists in top right menu of the catalog.  From there you can email or print the list of items you saved.

Books by and about people

• If you're looking for a book that is by somebody (a book that they wrote), search by "author", and use last name first, i.e. "Twain, Mark."
• If you're looking for a book about somebody, search by "subject", and also use last name first, i.e. "Twain, Mark."

• Click “Subject terms” (in the blue menu at the top) to browse and find the correct subject heading to use.
• Enter a search term in the Browsing: Academic Search Complete – Subject terms search box, i.e. “global warming.” 

• From the subject results, click on “GLOBAL warming” to see if it really is a useful subject heading. You may also see some related headings to use.  Copy the words of the subject heading you want to try, (i.e. “GLOBAL warming.”).
• Go back to your original search box and “paste” your subject heading in the first box at the left.  In dropdown next to the box, choose “subject.

• Under Limits, check the box for “Scholarly (Peer reviewed)."
• At the article pages, clicking on the journal title tells you about this publication – has audience, publisher, and links to other issues.
• No full text available?  You can request it via Oscar Express.
• Keep track of all your articles by clicking the +folder icon to save them to a temporary folder. 
• To review articles you've saved, click the folder icon at the very top of the screen. From there you can then print or email.