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ENGL 3250 - Hoffman: Find Articles

Tips for Searching for Articles

Take some time to think of the best keywords to enter and be ready to change them as you pursue your topic.  Get ideas for new keywords by carefully examining the title, abstract and subject fields in your first results.  If the database you're using has a thesaurus of terminlogy, use it!

Try these search features:

•         Use quotation marks to search for a phrase - "Clockwork Orange"

•         Set search limits such as scholarly journals, full-text, or document type

•         Sort results by date or relevance

•         Look at suggested subjects to narrow your search

•         Use truncation - *  (psycho* will find psycho, psychotic, psychosocial, for example)

If you’ve found an article in full-text, you can:

•         Use the email feature to send the citation and the article, or

•         Save the article, or Print the article

Using ILLiad

ILLiad can have a much slower turn around and lending libraries may place more restrictions on the loan period, so ILLiad should only be used when the resource is NOT available within the USG system through GIL Express.

To use ILLiad:

  1. First time users will need to register for an account
  2. Log into your ILLiad account
  3. Select the appropriate resource type under the "New Request" menu
  4. Be as detailed and accurate as possible when providing information about the article or book to increase the chance of the item being located
  5. You can check the status of your pending requests and checked out items by logging back into your ILLiad account

screen shot of ILLIAD form to request an article with New REquest highlighted in red

Frequently asked questions about ILLiad can be found here.

Recommended Databases for this Class