A tutorial on how to search the catalog, online databases, Google Scholar, and more.

1. INTRODUCTION TO LIBRARY RESEARCH
SFC LIBRARY
___________________________________________________________
How do I find the SFC Library
website?
1. library@sfc.edu
2. sfc.edu  Academics  Library
3. Google  sfc library
Everything you need for your research
can be found on the library website.
Take a moment to click on all the
buttons and tabs. Explore the
dropdown menus.
Check out the FAQ page.
http://library.sfc.edu/askalibrarian/faq
Questions? Ask a Librarian.
Don’t worry. You’re not wasting your
time, or ours.
Once you’ve become familiar with all
the resources SFC Library has to offer,
you’ll see how much easier your life is
when you start working on your
research paper.

2. STARTING THE PROCESS
Okay. Now you’re an expert at navigating the SFC Library website and ready to do some searching.
Let’s say you’re doing a research on ADVERTISING and need to find books and articles.
Are you interested in finding general articles on advertising, online advertising, the role of advertising on society, how
advertising affects the arts and commerce, etc.? The more narrow your search is, the more relevant results you will get.
(Note: “Narrow” doesn’t necessarily mean “too specific”. Narrow means “in the ballpark” of what you’re looking for.
Specific means “too many” details that may interfere with the results.)
Let’s start with articles. Where do you find them?
The library’s electronic databases (EBSCO, ProQuest, JSTOR, etc.) consist of multiple journals, which, in turn, consist of
multiple articles.
So, to find articles you can either search all the databases at once on the LIBRARY HOMEPAGE, search subject specific
databases on the DATABASES page, or individual journals on the JOURNALS page.

3. Composing Keywords
Let’s type each keyword / keyphrase into the Library
Catalog search box, limit the search to Articles &
Databases, and examine the results:

4. KEYWORD : ADVERTISING
One million, two hundred
seventy nine thousand, six
hundred sixty two articles.
Too many? You need to narrow
your search.

5. KEYPHRASE + KEYWORD:
“ONLINE ADVERTISING” SOCIETY
Success! A little over seven thousand is better than a
little over a million, wouldn’t you agree?
Notice that “online advertising is set off with quotation
marks. Why?
To make sure you get only those articles that have the
phrase “online advertising”, exactly the way you typed it.
If you didn’t use quotation marks, the database would
search not only for the phrase but also for the words
“online” and “advertising” separately, which would flood
you with more hits. Our goal is to get fewer results, not
more.

6. KEYPHRASE + TWO KEYWORDS:
“ONLINE ADVERTISING” INFLUENCE
TEENAGERS
213 results. That’s more
like it.
Remember: The more
specific your keywords /
keyphrases are, the more
relevant the results.

7. SEARCHING INDIVIDUAL DATABASES
While the Library Catalog is set up to search all of our electronic databases at once, a professor might direct you to a
specialized or “subject specific” database because the indexing of that database is more sophisticated and scholarly, or
because it specializes in a specific subject or discipline. Here are a few examples:
1. ARTstor: A database of more than two million art images from museum collections. Includes photographs,
costumes, illustrations, illuminated manuscripts, monuments and sculpture.
2. Literature Online: A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama
and prose, 350 full-text literature journals, and other criticism and reference resources.
3. New York Times Historical: This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online,
easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of politics, society and events from 1851-2007.
4. ProQuest : A database aggregator that includes 16 individual databases with articles on all major subjects.
5. EBSCOhost Web: A family of databases with articles in all major subject areas.
Searching such database families as ProQuest and EBSCOhost is similar to doing the Library Catalog on the homepage.
However, because each database makes its own tweaks to the search algorithms, the results may be different from
the Library Catalog’s.

8. Note that the search process is the same, but ProQuest’s
ranking is different from the Library Catalog’s.
We suggest using the Catalog first, and then, if you don’t
get relevant results, try the subject-specific or multi-
disciplinary databases.
Searching ProQuest

9. SEARCHING JOURNALS
Unlike databases, you cannot
find articles by searching all
the journals at once.
First, you have to find the
journal you want to search.
You can do that by browsing
the journals by subject or
searching for the journal by
title.
A subject browse for
Business & Economics shows
that the library has 85
journals on Advertising.
Select the journal you want
to search.

10. SEARCHING ADMEDIA
ADMEDIA is part of the EBSCOhost family
of databases. However, instead of
searching all of the journals comprising
the database, you’re only searching a
single journal.
Choose the date, volume and issue, and
type your keywords in the search box.

11. ADMEDIA: THE RESULTS
The top line
indicates the journal,
volume and issue
you’re about to
search.
Type your keyword /
keyphrase below.
Remember that
you’re searching
only ONE journal, so
you will not get as
many results as
when you’re
searching the entire
database.

12. NOW LET’S FIND SOME BOOKS
When you search for online articles, the search engine looks for the words in the title
as well as the text. That’s why you want to be specific.
But it’s different with books. The Library Catalog cannot search inside either print or
electronic books. It can only search the title field, the author field, or the description
field of a book.
Therefore, when you search for books you don’t want to be too specific, or you will get
zero results.

13. PRINT BOOKS are located in the stacks
(library cellar). Be sure to write down or
take a photo of the book’s call number.
Ask the
Reference Librarian on duty if you need
help.
Here are instructions on how to read
and download ELECTRONIC BOOKS
(scroll down for all the relevant
information.)
http://library.sfc.edu/services/ebooks

14. SEARCHING THE WEB
Search engines search the entire World Wide Web -- a sea of entertainment, news, social networking and information
of all kinds. Whether you prefer Google, Bing or Yahoo -- you probably use a search engine every single day.
Now that so many books, journals, magazines and newspapers are being published on the Internet, your favorite
search engine can also dig up information to help you in your college classes.
But, since publishers still need to make a living, books or articles that you come across via a search engine may not
be free. And, it's often surprisingly hard to tell which websites are appropriate for college-level research.
Library databases, on the other hand, were made especially for college-level research: they search collections of
journals, magazines, newspapers, ebooks (and more!) -- often focused on a particular subject.
Nevertheless, there are a growing number of legitimate research guides, full-text collections, and other scholarly tools
on the free web worth exploring. The challenge, with hundreds of millions of indexed sites, is finding the right ones.
Fortunately, there are a number of search techniques that researchers can use to refine their Google search results.
Here’s a good guide from MIT Libraries on how to use Google Search Operators.
http://libguides.mit.edu/google
You can also find Google Special Syntaxes on the SFC Library Blog:
https://ourlibraryblog.wordpress.com/google-search/

15. GOOGLE SCHOLAR
Google Scholar provides a way to find articles across the world of scholarly research. Unfortunately, most
pages will only provide an abstract, not full text -- unless SFC Library subscribes to the journal that contains
the article you’re looking for.
Let’s search Google Scholar for the same keywords and phrases: “online advertising” influence teenagers
To connect SFC Library with Google Scholar from
off-campus, go to:
scholar.google.com
Click on Settings
Click on Library Links
Search for St Francis College Library.
Place a checkmark next to
Full-Text@SFC Library
Click SAVE.
You only have to do this once.

16. CITING SOURCES
It's important to cite sources you use in your
research for several reasons:
* By listing your sources you show the readers
that you’ve done proper research.
* By giving credit to other researchers you show
yourself to be a responsible scholar.
* By quoting words and ideas used by other
authors you avoid plagiarism.
* By citing your sources accurately, you allow your
reader to track them by way of footnotes, a
bibliography or reference list.
Visit SFC Library’s Citation page (library.sfc.edu/citation)
for instructions on how to cite books, electronic articles
and websites, format in-text citations, and prepare a
Works Cited / Reference / Bibliography page.

17. COPYRIGHT
What is Copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States. (title 17, U.S. Code)
to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including. literary, dramatic, musical, artistic,
and certain other intellectual works. This. protection is available to both published and
unpublished works.
What is Fair Use?
Fair use permits the use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder
under certain circumstances. For libraries, educational institutions, and the public, the Fair
Use Doctrine is the most important limitation on the rights of the copyright owner—the "safety
valve" of US copyright law.
Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University Libraries provides a lot of excellent information for students and
faculty. https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/copyright-quick-guide.html

18. QUESTIONS?
http://library.sfc.edu/askalibrarian/contact
We’re here to help!