Old Website - Academic Search Complete

Welcome to the Academic Search Complete tutorial. Academic Search Complete is a multi-disciplinary database containing over 5,300 full-text periodicals including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. These are exactly the kinds of sources you need for college papers! This tutorial will walk you through setting up a search and navigating your results.

Ready to get started? Click the forward arrow below.

Accessing Academic Search Complete

Click Libraries at the bottom of the IRSC Homepage.

Accessing Academic Search Complete

Access Academic Search Complete from the IRSC Libraries page by selecting Find eResources (Articles) on the left hand navigation links.

Accessing Academic Search Complete

In the center of the page you will see a series of links. Select Databases by Subject.

Logging In

You will now see the login page that reads "Powered by LINCCWeb" in the upper right hand corner.

You will be prompted to login. Your username is your student ID number. Your password is your birth month and date. If your birth date is July 31, 1994, then your password would be 0731. Be sure the college selected in the drop down menu is Indian River State College.

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Databases by Subject

You will see a series of drop downs in the center of the page. Click the plus sign next to General. The option looks like this:

The second database in the list is Academic Search Complete (EBSCO). Click that link.

Keyword Searching

The search boxes are where you place your keywords.

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Boolean Operators

You can see the search boxes are connected by the word AND. This is a Boolean operator. You can choose AND, OR, or NOT to connect your search terms.

Connecting search terms with AND narrows your search by giving you only results containing both of those keywords.

Selecting OR broadens your search. It can be helpful to use OR to connect synonyms or similar keywords like "high school" OR "secondary school".

NOT should be used carefully. NOT subtracts all search results containing the keyword listed after it. It can be useful, but can also eliminate many good results.

Type your keywords in the boxes and select AND or OR to connect them.

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Limiters

In the Search Options area below the search boxes, make selections to limit your results. It's a good idea to always check the box next to Full Text.

Many assignments require the use of scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles. You can narrow your results to only scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles by selecting the box next to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.

It is often helpful (or necessary per the guidelines of your assignment) to search for articles published within a certain date range. You can set the date range in the Published Date area.

Once you select these and have input your keywords, click the Search at the top or bottom of the page.

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Search Results

This page shows your search results. At the top of the page are the same search boxes you saw on the search page.

Directly below the boxes at the left of the page, you will see "Refine Results". From here you can add or remove limiters you have used in your search. You can also refine by Source Type, Subject, Publication, Language, Geography, and others.

In the center of the page, to the right of your options to refine your search are your results.

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Refining the Search Results

Some unhelpful results can be eliminated by adding more limiters on the right side of the page. Limiting Source Types to Academic Journals and limiting Language to English brings the results down to 4,429.

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Narrowing Search Results by Adding Keywords

The search terms entered are broad. There is more than one approach to take to narrow the results.

One way is to add search terms. Adding search terms to specify some aspect of childhood obesity will help narrow the results. Some options to explore are the causes, possible solutions, social aspects, long-term health effects, etc of childhood obesity.

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Subject Searching

Another approach is to use subject terms. The database uses a controlled vocabulary which means it has a preferred way of labeling articles about childhood obesity. The subjects for each article are shown in this view.

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Subject Searching

Click on the title for the first result. Click on the hyperlinked subject OBESITY in children.

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Subject Searching

The database automatically starts a new search for the subject term "obesity in children".

The added search term and limiters selected earlier have been erased so add them again. Check the boxes for Full Text and Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals. Type 2013 in the first box of the Publication Date. Select Academic Journals under Source Types and English under Language. Add "social" in the next search box. Search.

This narrows the results to 455 articles.

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Database Tools

The results can be narrowed further by adding additional Subject terms to the search or additional keywords, as described earlier.

Click on the title of an article that looks promising. Click PDF Full Text on the left side (if available) to read the full article.

Because Full Text was selected when searching, the full text of all articles will be available as PDF, within the screen below the detailed record information as HTML, or both.

Database Tools

When you find an article you can use, save it immediately! It took a lot of steps to get to this point and it will be difficult to recreate your exact search later if you want to find this article again.

The database includes tools on the right side of the screen. You can use these tools to email the article to yourself, print it, save the permalink, or create an EBSCO account to save it to a folder within the database.

E-mail Tool

To email the article to yourself from within the database, click the E-mail tool.

Fill out the form that opens with the email address you want to use to receive the article. Adding a Subject line and Comments is optional. Click the radio button next to Citation Format and choose the style guide you use for your discipline. Press Send.

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Cite Tool

Below the E-mail tool on the right side is the Cite tool.

Caution: The cite tool almost always contains at least one mistake. That being said, it can help save you time when creating citations for your References of Works Cited page as long as you check the citation thoroughly for errors.

Scroll to the citation style you are using. Highlight the full citation and copy and paste into your Word document. Proofread and correct it according the style guide you are using.

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.

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