More Research Help on ..
General Searching Tips
- Most library research databases don't recognize phrase searching, you can't put in a whole sentence or ask it a question, so break your topic into concepts or keywords. For example, if your topic is "health insurance coverage for transgendered students at american colleges and universities" the search you enter might look like this: health insurance and transgendered and higher education and united states.
- Try to think of as many different words and phrases to describe your subject as you can. For example, for the concept of transgendered you might also try gender identity or sex reassignment. For the concept of higher education you might also try colleges or universities.
- When you find a good article look at their lit review or bibliography to see what articles they read. You might find one or two good ones.
Finding Books
You find books in the library catalog. The Wright State library catalog is on the library homepage (http://libraries.wright.edu/).
Finding Articles
You find articles or article citations in research databases. Begin from the Library homepage. Click on the Databases link (under Quick Links), then browse alphabetically for the title of the database you want. You can also browse our databases arranged by subject.
Here are direct links to some of the databases that will help you in this class:
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Get full-text access to magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals in the sciences, social sciences, business, education, and the humanities. Full-text may be available via Find-It. Useful place to begin broad searches for general topics.
- SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
Search extensively indexed books, monographs, and conference papers. This index features citations with subject headings from a sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers. SocINDEX covers all subdisciplines of sociology such as anthropology, criminology, demography, ethnic, racial, and gender studies, marriage, family, and social structures, and social work.
- LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window
LGBTQ+ Source contains literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. Indexes LGBTQ+ specific journals, magazines, regional newspapers, books, and reference works.
- Gender Studies Database This link opens in a new window
GSD covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Links to free and subscription based full-text articles. Includes professional journals, conference papers, books, government reports, discussion papers, theses and dissertations.
- Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window
Get full-text articles from over 500 journals. Topics include psychiatry, psychology, emotional and behavioral characteristics, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods. Search PsycINFO for a more complete representation of psychology literature.
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Indexes psychology literature and related disciplines including psychiatry, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, cognitive science, and linguistics. Includes journals and book chapters. Use Historic PsycINFO to identify literature published as early as the 1920s. Links occur to full-text when available.
Getting to Complete Articles Online
In almost all of the library research databases, you will see buttons that say Find It. This button will open another window where it shows you whether there is full-text access available or whether WSU subscribes to the journal in print. Many database citations will have a visible PDF link that takes you directly to the full-text article but not all citations have this link. If you do not see the PDF link there is still a good chance that you can get a full-text copy of the article online. Just click on the Find It link and this may lead you to a full-text copy of the article.
Subject Guide
