Instructions for Searching EBSCO Databases (prepared by Katie Meyer)
Instructions for Searching Gale Databases (prepared by Katie Meyer)
To search a database click on the database title. If you are searching off-campus and you are prompted for a user ID and password use your KCTCS credentials (the user ID and password you use for BlackBoard, MyPath, email, etc.
Keywords and Subject Headings
The databases do not respond as well as GOOGLE to natural language searches. You may be discouraged if you try to phrase your search as a question.. Use keywords connected with the word AND.
Use keywords to search the EBSCO and GALE databases. If you wish to find articles on the discrimination experienced by African Americans who migrated to Northern and Western cities try Great Migration AND discrimination. You can try using the word North but you will pull up articles with North Carolina in the title, subject headings or abstract. Southern states is a term frequently used to index articles. Northern states is seldom used.
You can narrow your search by choosing housing discrimination .
If you find a useful article look at the subject headings. You will find these under the article title. You can use these to help you find more articles. For example, if you are researching CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT you may notice that, in the EBSCO databases, the subject heading for articles dealing with classroom management is CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES. Articles in Academic OneFile are indexed with the term CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT.
Try different searches. Read the titles that you pull up; look at the subject headings; read the abstracts. You have to click on article titles to see abstracts. The abstracts are short, half-page descriptions of what is in the article. They can save you time. Read them before you click on HTML Full Text or PDF Full Text (to pull up the actual article.
Do not hesitate to ask for help. Come to the library during business hours; otherwise use the contact information on the right of this page. The CHAT option allows us to see your screen and show you ours.
If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see some videos on searching the EBSCO databases in the box Instructions for Searching EBSCO and Gale Databases.