Pathway to Database Searching: Agriculture

To find books, DVDs, videos, sound recordings, other single title materials:

  1. Go to the Library Homepage < http://www.bluecc.edu/library/>
  2. Under the heading, “Find Books and Videos,” select <Our Catalog>.
  3. Unless you are searching for a particular author or title, <Keyword> is your best choice to start.  You might have to experiment a little to find the combination of keywords that works best for your search.  For example:

<agriculture> is too broad and returns too many results to be useful.

A more targeted search, <agriculture> AND <oregon>, will return fewer results, but they are more focused and therefore likely to be more useful.

To find journal articles:

  1. Go to the Library Homepage < http://www.bluecc.edu/library/>
  2. Under the heading, “Find Articles,” select <Journal Databases>.
  3. Select <EBSCOhost>.  On the next page, select<EBSCOhost Web> and then choose from a list of journal and newspaper databases to find articles on your topic. For a topic in Agriculture, See the handout of suggested databases.  After ticking the boxes by these DB titles, press the CONTINUE button to access the search (or interface) page of the databases.

  1. Unless you are searching for a particular author or title, <Keyword> is your best choice to start.  Leave the “Select a Field” choice in the search box.)  You might have to experiment a little to find the combination of keywords that works best for your search.  For example:

    <photosynthesis> = 30,460 results (Actual number of results depends on the number of DBs you select.)
    <photosynthesis> AND <drought> produces 1,064 results. ( " )

    <photosynthesis> AND <drought> AND <wheat> produces 62 results. ( " )

    Adding more words NARROWS your search and makes it more focused.

    On the results page, to the left of the search results, is a sidebar with some of the SUBJECT headings that are in these citations.  Selecting one or two of these is likely going to narrow the search again by making it more targeted, more specific.  For example, in the search

    <photosynthesis> AND <drought> AND <wheat>, change <drought> to one of the suggested subject terms, <drought tolerance>, and change the term from a keyword to a SUBJECT Term.

    Your search fields will now look like this:

NOTE: There are further ways to limit your search.  On the very first search page, you can specify results made up of only FULL TEXT articles and/or SCHOLARLY (PEER REVIEWED) JOURNAL articles.