Sociology Research- Sellersburg

→ Use Discover! to search the entire library collection

 

Our library search engine, Discover!allows you to search our library catalog, eBook collections, and electronic databases (one of your largest sources of academic journals articles, among many other things!) all in one place.

Since Discover covers so much ground, starting your search for resources here will give you a very clear sense of whether you can find enough information to support your current topic.

On your Discover! search results page, look under the Library heading near the top of the left-hand column and click the link for Electronic Resources.

Your search results will now only show eBooks. From here, you can:

  • select one to read; or
  • narrow your results further using the options shown in the left-hand column

On your Discover search results page, click the button at the top of the right-hand column that says Only Show Database Results.

You'll now notice that the search results page only shows library databases items. From here, you can:

  • click the Check For Full Text button on any of the results you want to read; or
  • narrow your search results further using the options shown in the right-hand column

The search operators listed below can be used to connect your search terms together in different ways to generate more precise search results, and make it easier for you to find the exact information you need.

 

Broader results: Narrower results:
Putting or between two search terms will give you items that mention either one (or both) of the words your searched—which is especially useful when your search terms have synonyms (e.g., children or juveniles; crime or deviance). Putting and between two search terms means that everything in your search results will include both of your search terms—meaning you’re able to filter out irrelevant resources that only mention one of your search terms but not the other. Putting a minus sign ( - ) before a word filters out anything that includes that word—so if you search for sociology but see a lot of results about philosophy, you can omit those results by instead searching for
sociology –philosophy.

Putting quotation marks
(" ") around a phrase (e.g., “history of sociology”) will only return results matching that exact phrase, whereas 
searching the same phrase without quotation marks returns any item with any of those words  



undefined Why are search operators important?

  Combining your search terms with one or more of the search operators above will:

  • focus a search, especially when your topic contains multiple search terms
  • make each search more precise
  • help you find more relevant resources in less time