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Anthropology (UNH Durham)

Suggested Databases

Approaches to Searching and Finding Related Articles

Use 2 or 3 significant words or terms from your research topic. Use the connector "and" to retrieve records with all the keywords you list to focus and narrow your results

  • dating and culture and college

Develop synonyms and alternative terms. Use the connector "or" indicate that any one of the terms listed needs to be in the results shown; this usually increases the number of relevant results

  • Greek life or fraternities or sororities
  • exercise or physical activity

 Try a broader concept if a specific term doesn't retrieve enough results

  •  instead of UNH, try college or university (or their plurals)

Try a more specific aspect or element if you get too many results with a very broad concept

  • instead of alternative medicine, search a specific type such as acupuncture or homeopathy

Use quotation marks to indicate a phrase

  • "farmers market"

Use an asterisk * to pick up words with the same stem but different endings

  • "ethnograph** returns ethnography, ethnographic, ethnographers

Look for new words or terms to search when reviewing your results or reading the full-text article.

Searching by the subjects assigned to articles helps

  • identify articles in which the subject is a main focus and not just not just a passing reference
  • pull together results on same concept even if author uses different terms in title or abstract
    • the subject "capital punishment" will retrieve articles using the term "death penalty" as well as those using "capital punishment"
  • when a keyword may have multiple meanings or a more general meaning
    • the subject "flow (conscious state)" will get more relevant results than just searching the keyword "flow"

Look at the subject terms in records for articles that fit your topic closely and search those subjects for more articles

Use the thesaurus available in some databases to see if your keywords are subjects or if alternative terms are used

  • Sociological Abstracts uses "Alternative Medicine" as a subject but not "Alternative Healers"

Thesaurus may offer related or narrower terms that may be useful

  • In Sociological Abstracts, the subject "Sex Offenders" has as related terms "Child Sexual Abuse," "Rape," and "Sexual Assault"

Some specialized databases allow you to limit your search in other useful ways: educational level, language, etc.

Limiter options vary by database:

  • check the advanced search screen
  • view the limiters to the left or right on the search results page.

Make connections through ideas and concepts rather than specific words

Look at the reference list at the end of a relevant scholarly article you found. This may lead you to earlier articles related to your topic. Search the UNH Library catalog by the name of the journal to see if we have the article online or in print.

Check "Times CIted" links, if available, in databases such as Sociological Abstracts to identify some newer articles citing the article in the database record. This may lead to related relevant articles.

Use Web of Science and Google Scholar to follow citations from published articles to identify older and newer related articles across many disciplinary fields in the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities.

Google Scholar results include "Cited By" links to articles, books, presentations, and more. Note that not all links go to peer-reviewed publications.

What else have the author(s) published on this topic? Search their names in the relevant database or look for their CV (curriculum vita) online.

Subject-specific journals may publish articles on similar topics, so try searching within specific journal titles that you see appearing frequently in your search results.

Initial Search Options

The UNH Library search box provides one-stop searching for books and e-books; articles in newspapers, journals, and magazines; and video and audio

This can be useful if you want

  • multidisciplinary coverage specifically
  • initial exploration
  • additional resources by being comprehensive for articles outside of your primary discipline

You can limit results to peer reviewed journals and by publication date, An advanced search with additional options is available:

Keyword searching across citations, abstracts and full text of articles (even if the full text isn't available to you).

Advantages:

  • identify relevant articles, especially if your search is pretty specific.
  • useful for exploratory purposes or when you're "covering all the bases"

Disadvantages:

  • hard to organize or sort in useful ways
  • unable to search by subject or limit by anything other than time

Enhance efficiency by adjusting these Google Scholar settings so that

  • Library Links shows library access links to UNH (so you have quicker access to full text that UNH is subscribing to)

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Reading a Social Science Article