Sample Search for Scholarly Articles

Read scholarship to find research and theoretical analysis. 

Tips:

• Start with keywords that capture what you want to learn about your topic.
• Look for relevant subject terms. 
• Limit to peer reviewed scholarly journals in library databases to find scholarly analysis.
• Use the database to limit by date, geography, subject, and more.
• To help you evaluate if a source is useful, click on the title and read the abstract.
• You can click full text to find only full text articles. If you leave it unchecked, you may learn that we have the article in another library database - or you can borrow it for free through interlibrary loan.

Sample Search of Code Switching. (Click on Images to ENLARGE)

Step 1: Keyword is code switch*

Step 2: Search results point to Code-Switching (linguistics) as a useful Subject term to try.

Step 3: Searching by subject for Code-Switching (linguistics) and using limiters by date and source type (scholarly).

Step 4: Exploring others Subject Terms I might add to focus my search for useful sources.

Step 5: Read ABSTRACTS to decide if an article looks useful.

Multidisciplinary Databases

While the One Search looks in all Holman Library databases at once, I like to start with Academic Search Complete to find useful concepts and search terms!

One Search

The One Search looks in all of our databases at once.

To find scholarly journal articles in the One Search, limit to Peer Reviewed Journals after you search.

Specialized Database in Communication Studies

Use this database to find articles in the field of communication studies.

Click on a title to find the article abstract, or summary. 

If you find a title that is abstract only (not full text), you may request it for free through InterLibrary Loan.