Library Services
- Contact me by email at any time for quickest response
- Set up a Zoom research consultation with me
- Library is fully open again (post COVID)
- study spaces, Graduate Commons
- Scan on Demand
- Request from libraries outside of Omni
- Mail on Demand
- Omni Pick-up Anywhere
Managing Citations
Starting with Omni
- Essential navigation
- books, ebooks, journal articles, magazine articles, streaming video and audio titles, government documents....
Deep diving into ebooks
While Omni contains a catalogue record (author, title, etc.) of our eBooks, an Omni search does not search the full text of each book. Instead, you need to visit and search the various sites where our eBooks are stored. Some examples include:
Literature Review
- examples of a literature reviews
- Davis, D. E. (2019). Strong Black Women, Depression, and the Pentecostal Church (Order No. 13807317). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2195541041). (see Page 23)
- Planning a literature review
- Developing a research question
Well developed research questions can only be developed with a comprehensive understanding of prior research and theory. This understanding is informed by research literature. The challenge is to use the appropriate tools and methods to ensure your search for this literature is both methodical and complete. Here are some steps to fine-tune your searches.
- Formulate specific research questions
- identify the key elements of your questions
- Consider word variations and synonyms
- widen the scope of your results; think about how others might refer to your ideas
- Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
- AND = results will contain all the terms
- OR = results will contain at least one of the terms
- NOT = results will exclude the term
- Parentheses and Boolean operators can be used to set apart search groups
- NEAR/# = search terms within a specified number of words apart, e.g., nursing NEAR/3 education
- Limit or expand terms
- "quotation marks" = exact
- truncat* = truncate, truncates, truncated, truncation, etc.
- Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
- peer reviewed, article type, date
- Identify key publications and authors
- note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
- Document and track everything you do in the steps above
Choosing a Library Database
- Start with Omni to get a lay of the land
- use Articles, date, language, and online limiters
- results come from all disciplines, which is both positive and negative
- Consider searching one of our specialized databases
- ATLA Religion Database
- contains bibliographic records of academic articles in the area of religion
- Sociological Collection
- includes Sociological Abstracts and Social Work Abstracts
- Additional tips
- If you already know the title of an article, you can search for it in Omni
- Finding an article when you only know the title
- Proquest and EBSCO are not themselves databases, but rather platforms through which we can access our subscription databases
- create accounts in either/both to save results and searches
Why can't I just use Google Scholar?
- Google Scholar is appealing because, like Omni, it is easy to use and brings back immediate results
- unlike our subscription databases
- there are very few data fields that can be searched
- predatory journals are also included (see this research article)
- See these Google Scholar results
Predatory Journals
- Check for publication integrity before misconduct (Nature, Jan 7, 2020)
- The undercover academic keeping tabs on ‘predatory’ publishing (Nature, March 16, 2018)
- How Academia, Google Scholar And Predatory Publishers Help Feed Academic Fake News (Forbes, Dec 16, 2016)
- Examples: Ideal Journal of Psychology and Theology; International Journal of Transformative Research
- Beall's list (wikipedia page)
- Think. Check. Submit.
Remember other types of resources
Click on Research Materials at the top of this page to see the other types of sources you might want to use, including videos, theses, and statistics.