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Tips and tricks for using EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete database, which is a good general starting point for most research. These search tips will work for any EBSCO database, including Business Source Complete, MasterFILE Premier, and MEDLINE, to name a few. | Time - 3:01 | Transcript

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Using an EBSCO Database

[Image of UW Libraries homepage]

Audio: I’m going to demonstrate some tips and tricks for using EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete database, which is a good general starting point for most research. But you will find that these search tips will work for any EBSCO database, including Business Source Complete, MasterFILE Premier, and MEDLINE, to name a few.

Now let’s connect to the database. First we’ll click the link for “Articles and Research Databases,” then we’ll click here to connect to Academic Search Complete. (Remember to log in for off-campus access if you’re doing your research away from campus).

[Image of EBSCO homepage]

Audio: Ok, now let’s try a basic search in EBSCO – let’s say we are doing research on what it means to have a multiracial identity. I’ll type “multiracial identity” into the search boxes, and click “search” to get going.

[Image of search results page]

Audio: Ok, looks like we got 38 results – not too bad, but let’s use some of these tools to narrow it down even more.

Using the left-hand navigation bar, we can automatically limit our search results to show us only journal articles – this is great when your instructor has told you to find “scholarly research.”

[Image of search results page with Academic Journals limit]

Audio: Notice that by limiting only to academic journals, we’ve cut our results down to 30. Let’s return to the full list of results by clicking back on the “All Resources” link.

[Image of search results page]

Audio: Another helpful way to narrow your results is to use the Subject Headings suggested in the left navigation bar. These are like tags that have been given to articles based on the subjects discussed in each article. Let’s try clicking on “race relations” to limit our results list to ONLY those articles that have been given that Subject Heading.

[Image of search results page with Subject Heading limit]

Audio: Just by clicking that one link, we’ve cut down our results list down to 8 articles, all of which we know will talk about race relations.

Remember that if limiting by one subject doesn’t work for you, all you have to do is click the little orange “x” to remove that limit, and return to your previous search results.

[Image of search results page]

Audio: You can also use the date and language limiters in the navigation bar on the right hand side of the screen. Let’s limit our search by checking the box for “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals” and say we want only articles published since the year 2000.

[Image of search results page with date/language limits]

Audio: Limiting our original search with those parameters has narrowed it down to 28 results.

You can always experiment with different search terms, subject headings, and search limits to find the articles that will be most useful to you.

[Image of UW Libraries homepage]

Audio: Remember, if you get stuck or have any questions, contact a UW Librarian by clicking on the “Ask Us” link on the UW Libraries homepage.