Undertaking a web search, e.g. a Google Search, will throw you into three main areas:
Often you will find news articles, organizations' websites, blog posts, videos, podcasts, photo streams, public profiles on social media, etc. Some of which may be useful, but not substantial alone for an academic assignment.
Usually, these pages are toward the middle section or later in web search results, but certain keywords may take you there almost immediately.
Sometimes, you will find credible, authoritative info like journal articles and reports, but you are prompted to pay for access or be a member of an organization. Welcome to the "Deep Web".
The Libraries provides you with access to a part of this Deep Web.
This 'part' includes access to millions of academic journal articles, professional journal articles, reports, and more.
Infographic credit: Smart Cosmos (2017), published on Medium.
Note: The infographic reads as follows. Surface Web: Yahoo!, Google, reddit, CNN.com, bing. Deep Web: Academic databases, Medical records, financial records, legal documents, some scientific reports, some government reports, subscription only information, some organization-specific repositories. Dark Web: TOR, political protest, drug trafficking, and other illegal activities. 96% of content is estimated to be from the Deep Web or Dark Web.
Infographic credit: Smart Cosmos (2017), published on Medium.
This video quickly and clearly explains the benefits of using the library databases from your academic institution.
The GALILEO Discovery Search and its associated suite of research databases provide access to millions of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, popular sources, and other resources for research.
Credit: Yavapai College Library
GALILEO Discover searches all of the Libraries' databases at once.
As GALILEO covers a wide range of disciplines, searching within an individual, or a small set of subject-specialty databases can be more on target and efficient. It is worth running a search on GALILEO first, and then run a similar search in a subject database/set of databases.
Q) How do I know which individual databases to search in?
A) The easiest way is to consult a Library Research Guide
A Library Research Guide is created by a librarian for a particular subject or topic. It typically includes a list of links of top individual databases for that subject.
Many Library Research Guides also include a GALILEO Discover Search widget so you can search GALILEO from the Research Guide.
Selecting your source:
The GALILEO Discover bar can be found on the home page of Reese Library. It can be useful for gaining an introduction to a topic, searching for multiple disciplines, or for locating a particular article through a title or author search. The GALILEO Discover bar can, however, return results sets that are too large to manage or results that are too broad in scope. Utilize the Advanced Discover Search for more precise searching. This resource includes articles, books, media, and more.
GALILEO searches across all of the Libraries' databases at once.
Enter a few keywords and/or "key phrases", or search by title or author > Search or hit Enter/Return
