Write In Time

Resources and assistance with your research in this course.

Tutorials and Help Pages

Troubleshooting Searches

Too few articles:

  • Check for typos and spelling. Consider using both American and British spellings (eg. behaviour or behavior).
  • Remove long phrases.
  • Make sure you're using a database that is likely to include information on your topic.
  • Try using other synonyms and alternate words joined by the Boolean Operator 'OR' (e.g. aboriginal or indigenous or First Nations).
  • Check your Boolean logic.  Are you using 'AND' when you should be using 'OR'?
  • If you have found at least one good article, look at the references of this article to find other related articles OR use the 'Find citing' or 'Find related' buttons when available in the databases.

Too many articles:

  • Add another concept to your searching using the Boolean operator 'AND'.
  • Add Limits (e.g. Peer Reviewed, Date of Publication, Language, Publication Type, etc.).
  • Check your Boolean logic. Are you using 'OR' when you should be using 'AND'?
  • When Keyword searching, try searching just in the Title field. This is not recommended for all searches, as you will eliminate relevant articles that don't have those keywords in the title, but it will likely find a few articles to get you started.
  • If you're searching in a database that covers all subjects (e.g. Academic Search Elite, Web of Knowledge), look for a database that is subject specific.

Find Articles in Omni

You can find most articles using the Omni search. Enter some keywords, a citation, a DOI, an author - whatever you need.

The link to full text is in the full description when you click the title.

Scholarly Articles Databases

Sometimes you want a very controlled search in a subject-specific database, and the library offers access to many scholarly databases, called "indexes". Scholarly articles are found using indexes that describe articles from thousands of different journals. 

To find articles useful in this course, try one or more of these:

  • Academic Search Elite is a very friendly, easy-to-use database that covers all types of publications on almost any topic.  It's a great starting point.  Be sure to limit your results to "Scholarly Journals", so you avoid magazines and newspapers.
  • Large scale journal article indexing is offered through Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Academic OneFile.
  • Canadian Business and Current Affairs and CPI.Q cover Canadian journals & newspapers. Limit your results to "Academic", "Scholarly" or "Peer Reviewed" journals.
  • Scholars Portal Journals allows you to search and browse much of full text e-journals available at Trent (but not all). It offers options for "more like this", but the search engine is not as powerful.

Choose your favourite database, based on the descriptions of what they cover and which interface you prefer.  However, your best work uses several databases and several searches.

Not sure what all this means?  Review the tutorial on "Finding Articles".