Tips
- Choose the right database for what you need. General databases cover a lot of ground, but subject specific databases like Sociological Abstracts, Pubmed, ERIC or PsycInfo might save you time and get you better results.
- Many databases have a way to limit results to scholarly articles or peer-reviewed articles.
- Don't limit yourself only to full text articles in your database - let InfoLink find more options for you.
Academic Search Elite
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Academic Search Elite - basicTechniques to search articles in Academic Search Elite, find online articles and request scanned copies of articles not available online.
Searching in other databases
After learning about search strategies and techniques in the Academic Search Elite video above, you can use the following videos to learn about specialized databases good for research in fields related to social work. You don't have to watch them all, but choose what interests you.
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PsycInfoPsycInfo covers journals, books and other sources in psychology and counseling. I look here for articles related to individuals, how the brain works, therapies and counseling.
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Sociological abstractsSoc Abs covers journals in sociology. I look here for articles about how groups work, society in general, cultural factors, etc.
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Searching many databases through infohawk+Infohawk+ searches for articles across many of our general research databases. While it covers a lot of ground, Smart Search may return an overwhelming number of results. This may be useful in early stages of your research to help you narrow your topic and see what databases return useful results.
Dan the Librarian
Dan Gall
Contact:
335-5256 (local)
877-807-9587 (toll-free)
lib-disted@uiowa.edu
877-807-9587 (toll-free)
lib-disted@uiowa.edu
Subjects:Social Work