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Research Guides

EDUC 641: Teaching as Inquiry & Advocacy

Finding Materials

ScholarSearch is Drew Library's Google-like search of resources—both scholarly and not—available to our users. Unlike a Google search, your results will be reliable, trustworthy sources that you can use for your papers and projects. 

ScholarSearch is a great starting point for your research.  When you use ScholarSearch, you are searching for the many resources that are available at our library. This includes books, e-books, journal and newspaper articles (including peer-reviewed articles), book reviews, encyclopedia articles, government documents, streaming videos, and much more. It searches almost all of our databases at once!

The Library's catalog is called Locate. It provides a precise method for searching the Library's collection. You can use the catalog to find books, e-books, special collections, government documents, and other materials. You can also find these things using ScholarSearch, which mixes these items in with results from our database subscriptions. Both tools can be useful. Many students will prefer the greater range of results and ease of use of ScholarSearch, while others find the ability to limit results to items in the Drew collections and the ability to search certain specific facets to be very helpful.

Since the catalog focuses primarily on books, it's a good place to look for lengthy discussions of topics.

Databases are collections of information that can be searched. They hold journal articles, books, book chapters, indexes, bibliographies, audiovisual materials, and more. While most library databases have a specific subject focus, many are multidisciplinary, as well, and cover a variety of topics. Databases are specialized, scholarly resources that the Library subscribes to. You can explore the Library's databases by visiting the A-Z List. You can either browse them alphabetically, filter them by subject, type, or vendor, or search for something specific in the search box. 

ScholarSearch

ScholarSearch
Advanced search

Locate Search Box

Locate

Search Tools

Searching ERIC through Drew/Ebsco

Search In ERIC on digital storytelling AND (instruction or classroom)

Basic search strategy

Library databases general use 'boolean logic,' 'keyword,' and 'controlled vocabulary' (subject heading) searches rather than Google-type 'natural language searching'

When searching in ERIC or any other library-type database, you want to separate your topic into concepts and connect them with boolean logic (and parentheses, if necessary).

  • When two concepts, and/or the keywords that express them, should BOTH appear in any relevant searches, you want to connect them with AND like this: digital storytelling AND instruction
    This narrows your search
  • When EITHER of two alternative concepts, or synonyms/related keywords would make your result relevant, connect them with OR, like this: classroom OR instruction
    This widens your search
  • As in math, different search boxes or parentheses allow you to group results:
    digital storytelling AND (instruction or classroom)

Other search tiips

  • You can 'truncate' a term with an asterisk * to find that term and all its suffixes: teach* gets teach, teaches, teaching, teacher, teachers, teachable, etc.
  • Phrases can be kept together in search by enclosing them with quotes: "adaptive learning"
  • Use "Apply equivalent words" and "apply related subjects" to widen your search.
  • Use limits (see next slide for details).

A slide showing the lower part of the ERIC advanced search screen, with education level, intended audience and language limits

Limiting in ERIC

ERIC has snazzy ways to limit your results:

In the limits drop-downs, you can use Ctrl-click  or Shift-click select more than one term.

  • Education level is the level of the students being taught/the education being provided. (note that Elementary Education and Primary Education are broadly similar, as are High Schools and Secondary Education: choose both, plus respective grade levels, for the best results)
  • Intended audience is the audience of reader to which the text is directed. (Teachers and Practitioners should be selected at the same time.)
  • You can also limit to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) publications to get academic standard journal research
  • If you limit to full text publications, you may miss some that are in Drew's other databases
  • You can limit by date, language, publication type, etc.
  • The What Works Clearinghouse rating is specific to research articles published after 2002.

Questions? Need Help? Email reference@drew.edu

Drew University Library, http://www.drew.edu/library