Cunningham Memorial Library: Applied Clinical and Educational Sciences (ACES): Beginning to Search

Cunningham Memorial Library (Physical Location)	7am – 7pm
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Research & Instruction	By Appointment
Administration Office	8am – 4:30pm
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Writing Center	Closed

Beginning to Search

You may need to find material for a literature review. Or, perhaps you have just been given a list of readings and been instructed to locate them for class. Notice that you've been given citations. Are they for articles? book chapters? books? How will you know and then, how will you find the material?

Citations are important because they inform readers as to who was consulted, in a manner of speaking, Citations also help researchers locate source material. Citations are important elements in scholarly and professional communication. If you haven't written any citations yet, you will soon so, pay attention to how they're constructed. In the Bayh College of Education, you'll use APA 7th edition style. If you're not sure how to use these citation, click here to begin to learn how. More assistance with APA is available through APA Academic Writer.

Once you can read the citation and know what type of material you need to locate, use the following links for instructions on how to find what you need.

You may will find that many them are accessed through EBCSOHost. This is very basic information to get you started. The first two steps will take you to the page that contains links to library's entire list of databases.

To locate the EBSCO databases for education

Click the 'Articles and Databases' tab on the library's homepage.
Click 'Databases A-Z'.
Locate and click the tab for 'EBSCOhost.
On this next page, select from the following databases for your search. Perhaps those your instructor has recommended some which are specific to your field of study.

Education Source
ERIC
Professional Development Collection
Psych Articles

Academic Search Complete and MasterFILE Premier are pre-selected. Keep them.
If you are researching issues that concern management, communications, health or other fields be sure to include databases relevant to those areas. Use "enter" key to go to the next page.
You're now ready to begin searching for material inside the databases.

Additional Tips

Don't limit your searching to full text if you want to find every relevant article that's available. Remember, if the library doesn't have the item available, you can request it through ILL.
DO limit to 'scholarly (peer-reviewed)'. You'll want to find items that written by those with recognized authority in the field of education.
If you're not getting good results try a different database or change your keywords. Additional databases can be found here. If this does not help, contact your librarian for additional support.

Books can be available in print or ebook. Both formats offer identical information. If you need a chapter in a book, you will find it by searching for the book in which it is contained. An APA citation will contain all the information you need to locate the book.

There are several ways to search for books, the following are among the best.

First, use the library’s homepage (library.indstate.edu) to see if the book is available in print form in the library or in ebook through the databases. Use the advanced search feature to search for the title of the book.

Selected to search by title. If you know the author’s name, enter that information as well.

If you see no results, check that the title and the spelling are both correct.

If we do not have the book, search WorldCat. This is an online catalog that has the holdings of most of the libraries in the world. From here you’ll be able to generate an InterLibrary Loan (ILL) request.

Visit WorldCat's First Search to find the book in another library and request it through InterLibraryLoan. You''ll see a ‘Send ISU ILL request to ILLiad’ link to request the book.

Why would you need to search for a journal? You may have been instructed to find articles from specific journals in your field or you could be interested in writing for a journal and want to get an idea what some of its articles look like. It could also happen that you’re having a difficult time finding a specific article in the library and need to know if we have full access to the journal in which it was printed.

This information will help you locate print and electronic journals to which the library has full access.

Print journals are located in the basement of the library. Electronic journals are collected in the databases. If you need an article that it available in print, request it through ILL and their Document Delivery Service will scan and email the article to you.

You can search for both print and electronic journals in the same manner. While there is more than one way to search for journals in the library, I’m going to suggest the way that is most efficient.

On the library’s homepage, select the tab to search Articles and Databases.

Then, beneath the search box select Electronic Resources Home.

You’ll find a gold search box on the bottom of this page.

Here, you’ll enter the complete tile of the journal for which you’re searching and capitalization is not required. If there are no results, do check the title and spelling that you’ve entered. If there are still no results, we do not have full access to that journal.

If it is available, you’ll be provided links to them or will be told where to locate the print volumes in the library.