These databases are good for more than just finding scholarly articles. They are also excellent tools to help you think more clearly. Don't worry if your topic seems too broad or unfocused. At the early stages of the research process that can be a very good thing because it will afford you the freedom you need to begin developing a defensible argument as you read the literature. Because scholarship is very much like a conversation, a big part of your job when writing a research essay is to find a way to fit your own voice into the work that has already been done by others. If you approach research like this by allowing your ideas and arguments to emerge naturally from what you read in the literature, you will find that your bibliography practically writes itself!
For a more comprehensive listing see the History Research guides.
For a more comprehensive listing, see the Philosophy Research Guide and the Religion Research Guide.
For a more comprehensive listing, see the English Literature Research Guide.
When searching online, various words are used to help broaden or narrow your search. Here are a few tips you should know before searching any academic database:
Boolean operators: Most internet and electronic databases follow the rules of boolean logic. Boolean logic refers to the relationships (connections or differences) between different search terms. The most common boolean operators are:
AND - used to narrow a search and establish more relevant results by linking keywords together (e.g. "behavioural" and "psychology").
OR - broadens a search and get more results. Typically used for synonyms and words with variant spellings (e.g. "self-actualization" and "self-identity").
NOT - use to narrow a search and get more relevant results (e.g. "behaviouralism" not "humanism").
Truncation: used to find similar words with different endings
e.g. human* searches "human and humans"
e.g. educat* searches "education", "educate", "educational" etc
asterisk (*) searches for various different endings of a word in most databases (including York University), however LexisNexis uses an exlamation mark (!).
Advanced Search - this option is available on most databases, and allows you to specialize your search based on documents (books, articles, video etc), date, geographic location, language, etc.
Quotation Marks - using quotation marks will allow you to search for exact phrases. For example, searching "mental impairment" will only retreive searches with both "mental" and "impairment" together in that order.
Refine Search - many online databases allow you to specify your search criteria after selecting your keywords and clicking on search.
Finding a Specific Journal - if you know the name of the journal you are looking for, search for it in Omni.