This page contains important information that will help you use the library catalog and library databases more effectively. If you have any questions, please contact me. 😃
If you’re off campus, you’ll be prompted to sign-in before you can access electronic resources from the library catalog and in the databases. Use your MyNOVA username and password.
In order to search the library catalog and most databases, you'll need to come up with one or two keywords to use. The easiest thing to do is use your topic as your keywords. If you have two concepts, type them into two different search fields. Don't type sentences or questions into the search fields.
The library catalog and most databases provide the following helpful filters to narrow down your search results:
Full text: Apply this filter to remove all search results that do not include the full text of the article. Note: if you find an article that doesn't include the full text, contact me and I will try to get the full text.
Publication date: A good date range to start with is the last five years.
Source type: Articles from newspapers and magazines are good places to start because they help you get a sense of your topic. They are written by journalists for the general public, so they tend to be written at a basic or intermediate level. Once you're more familiar with your topic, and have narrowed it down, you can search for articles from academic journals. These are written by experts (usually academics) for other experts, so they tend to be written at an advanced level. They're usually about a very narrow topic, such as a new research study (in the sciences) or a new interpretation of a literary work (in the humanities).
The library catalog and most databases provide the following helpful tools:
Citation: This tool provides the citation for the selected item. The citation is usually given in several formats, including MLA and APA.
Email: In the library catalog, this tool lets you email the selected record of an item to yourself. In databases, this tool lets you email the selected article to yourself. Most databases give you the option to include the citation of the article, in the style that you select, in the same email.
Permalink: When you're using library databases, the URLs that appear in your browser’s address field are temporary and expire once you leave the database. This means that if you copy and paste the URL somewhere, then click on it later, it will not take you back to the page in the database that you were on. It will just give you an error message. If you want to save the URL of a page in a library database, use the permalink tool. This generates a URL that is permanent, so it will take you back to the page in the database that you were on.