• You don't need a password to search EBSCOhost or Social Work Abstracts 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.

Academic Search Premier 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 social work journal published, but it covers the core journals and will be sufficient to find a few articles on most topics. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, we recommend that you always search this database.

PsycINFO contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and the psychological aspects of related disciplines, including social work. Highly recommended if your topic has anything to do with human behavior.

PsycARTICLES contains more than 25,000 full-text articles from 42 journals published by American Psychological Association and allied organizations. Coverage includes general psychology and specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology.

Next choose the On Campus or Off Campus link (don't forget, you'll need a user id and password if you are working from off campus). Once you enter EBSCOhost, the default database will be Academic Search Premier, so if you also wish to include PsycINFO or PsycARTICLESin your search, you have to scroll down the list and click the PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES checkboxes as well. Then click Continue. You then will see a search screen. Click the blue Advanced Search tab at the top of the page, and you will see a screen that looks like the one below.

Let's say that you were doing research on using music to help autistic children. Here is one way to construct this search:

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.

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

The end result of your search will be a list of articles that looks like this:

The red arrows show you two possible full-text choices and one non-full-text choice:

HTML Full Text contains the words from the article, but it has been reformatted from the original.

PDF Full Text is a scanned version of the original article, so it will look like a photocopy.

When there is no full text availalbe through EBSCOhost, it says: Check Library Periodicals Directory for Availability. You can determine if the journal is available by checking the Periodicals Directory (http://www.niagara.edu/library/perdir.html). This will tell you if the journal you need is in the Library or if the full text is available online. If the journal you need is not listed in the Periodicals Directory, you can request your article through the Library's Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Service (www.niagara.edu/library/illstu.html).

Take a close look at the abstract and the lines labeled de and cc, which are the subject headings or descriptors used to describe what the article is about. Do you see any terms that might be synonymous with group therapy? How about group work or support groups? Come to think of it, we could have included "group counseling" as well. If you were really doing this research, you would go back to the search screen and substitute your newly discovered synonyms for group therapy. It is only by experimenting and keeping your eyes open for different ways of referring to the same concept that you can be assured that you are not missing anything.

Here is how you 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.