Articles

Academic Onefile

Academic OneFile searches millions of articles for your keywords or subject.  The default search is a keyword, finding any word(s) you type in the box anywhere in an article.  To get broader results in a keyword search, use an asterisk to search for variations on a word:  energ* will find energy, energies, energetic or any other word beginning with the letters energ.

Subject searches are more specific.  You must use defined terms that are already in the system, but the benefit of using subjects is that you will find articles where that word or phrase is a main topic of the article.  To find articles on a subject, click on Subject Guide Search.

OmniFile

You can search OmniFile (EBSCOhost) with the same phrases that are listed above.  Because Academic OneFile and OmniFile search different journals and resources, you will find articles in OmniFile that are not available through OneFile.

The Thesaurus function in OmniFile is similar to the Subject Search in OneFile.  For the best results, change the browsing box to relevancy ranked, and then type in the word(s) to search.  Click on a listed term to see related topics.  To search, put a checkmark in front of one or more subject terms and click the Add button.  Your terms will appear in the top-most box with a DE to denote topic.  Click the green Search button to run the search and find all articles with your selected subject(s).

Issues & Controversies

Issues & Controversies in American History

These databases provide essays to give you great background information on a topic, including timelines, legislation passed, and key players to know. If you find that you get too many resources on your results list, you can narrow this down to the best essays by going to article type and checking the “article” box. You can also try “by the numbers” to see statistics, “primary sources” to read original sources (like the laws as written and passed), or chronologies to see timelines and major events.  Newspaper articles are also available; click any of the boxes in the Reuters news feed section to see current or older newspaper articles on your topic. (Reuters is a news agency that writes many of the stories published in newspapers. They are an excellent and reliable source for the most current information.

Newsbank

Newsbank provides (non-scholarly) coverage of topics from newspapers around the world. For the most recent, up-to-the-moment coverage of a topic, search here for articles. A keyword search will go through the full text of all articles in the database, which may give you too many results.  You can retrieve more precise results by doing an Advanced Search and changing the “All Text” drop-down box to “Lead/First Paragraph” or “Headline.” You can also change the article ranking in the upper-right from “Newest” to “Best Match.”