Niagara University Library: Guide to Finding Education Articles

Niagara University Library
Guide to Finding Education Articles

This guide is intended to help you find research articles in scholarly journals using the Academic Search Premier database via EBSCOhost (www.niagara.edu/library/ebsco.html). Click the EBSCOhost link to start your search, but please read on first:

You don't need a password to search EBSCOhost from anywhere on campus. But if you are connecting from home, you will need a user id and password. Please visit the Request Passwords For Off-Campus Access to Library Databases page for easy instructions.

What is Academic Search Premier?

Academic Search Premier is one of the databases available through the EBSCOhost database system. It provides full text for more than 4,700 publications, including full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed journals. If an article is "full text," it means that you can view the article immediately. It does not cover every education journal published, but it covers the core journals, and will be sufficient to find a few articles on most topics.

Connect to Academic Search Premier

Clicking on the Academic Search Premier via EBSCOhost link (www.niagara.edu/library/ebsco.html) will open a new browser window, which allows you to easily switch back to this guide. Then choose the on-campus or off-campus link. Once you enter the system, the default database will be Academic Search Premier, so you can just click Continue. You then will see a screen that looks like the image below. Click the Advanced Search tab at the top of the screen

Construct Your Search

The concept common to all your searches will be the elementary grade level. The two most important terms in this sense will be "elementary or primary," but you could also type "kindergarten" as well. Here is an example of a search of cooperative learning at the elementary level.

You would just substitute your concepts for "cooperative learning" and leave the first box ("elementary or primary") exactly as is.

Note how the connectors OR and AND are being used.

OR: retrieves synonyms or variations of a word.
AND: coordinates the different aspects of your search.

Searching in this way employs something called Boolean Logic (www.lscc.cc.fl.us/library/guides/boolsea.htm)

Also note how the full-text and peer reviewed boxes are checked. This will limit your search to articles that can be viewed in full-text on the computer but that are also from scholarly or research journals, which is what "peer reviewed" signifies.

Please note, however, that not every article in a research journal is a research study, so you will have to be selective.

The end result is a list of articles that looks like this:

The red oval shows you two possible full-text choices:

HTML Full Text contains the words from the article, but the article does not look exactly like the original.

PDF Full Text is a scanned version of the original, so it will look like a photocopy and requires that you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer (which you probably do). If you do not have it, you can download it for free from Adobe's web site.

It is a good idea to experiment with different searches, but keep your search as simple as possible.

Here is an example or how you might do a search on ability grouping in elementary schools:

Here is an example of a search looking for research on reading in kindergarten:

Cite Your Article Properly

When you obtain an article from a database, you need to cite it as such.

Here is how you can cite an article obtained through Academic Search Premier using APA style:

Borman, W. C., Hanson, M. A., Oppler,
   S. H., Pulakos, E. D., & White, L. A.
   (1993). Role of early supervisory
   experience in supervisor performance.
   Journal of Applied Psychology, 78,
   443-449. Retrieved September 12, 2002,
   from Academic Search Premier database.

Consult the APA web site for additional information on citing electronic resources: www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

If you read or copied the article yourself, you can still use the above citation as a model, except you would just drop of the part starting with "Retrieved ..."

If You Did Not Find Everything You Need,
Ask a Reference Librarian For Assistance

If you need assistance, please stop by the Library reference desk, call 716-286-8022, or send an email message to reflib@niagara.edu.