Use the Discover@MU search engine located below and on the libraries' homepage to search for articles on a topic and known articles..
On the library home page click on the link LOOKING FOR? a specific article to access the journal article finder. Fill out the form and search for the article.
Search the article title in Discover@MU. (Tip: Put quotation marks around the article title so that it is searched as a phrase)
Use Keywords: select terms that describe your topic. You may want to include synonyms for the terms you select.
Use Boolean operators (AND & OR) to either narrow or expand your focus:
AND narrows your search by limiting search results to those that include all terms entered.
OR expands your search by including results for all terms entered along with results for individual terms. To find out more about how Boolean operators work, watch this video.
Use Search Strategy Builder to create a search strategy for your topic.
Use quotation marks to ensure that terms appear together in search results. For example, searching for "voodoo economics" will bring back results containing this phrase as a whole and not results containing only "voodoo" or "economics."
Use parentheses to create sets of search terms. Putting terms into parentheses indicates you want those terms to be searched first. For example, in a search for government AND (economics OR finance), the terms in parentheses (economics OR finance) are processed first.
Compose a specific research question to determine your strategy moving forward. An example of a research question is: "What is the effect of voodoo economics on poverty rates?". For this question, you might try the following search: ("voodoo economics" OR "trickle-down economics") AND poverty.
Check the Research by Subject guides for recommended databases to use for your topic.
