Getting Help With Your ABA Library Research (1:23)
3 Databases in 3 Minutes (3:06)
Using CHOP, DROP, and OR Search Strategy (3:21)
Finding an Article I Need Using OneSearch (1:31)
Browsing ABA Journals to Find Useful Articles (2:26)
Searching Inside a Specific ABA Journal (1:38)
Requesting a "Citation Online" Article Using OneSearch (2:37)
Help Finding More Results (2:30)
Help Finding Fewer Results (3:03)
Description: Good database for most research topics and contains lots of full text and peer reviewed articles.
Time Period: 1909 to present
Sources: Indexes nearly 20,000 Academic and peer reviewed journals and magazines and provides full text for more than 5,700.
Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Law, Music, News, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology
Primary Materials: Abstracts, Case Studies, Citations, Conference Papers, Images, Journal Articles, Magazine Articles, News, Other, Reviews
Description: JSTOR allows you to search across approximately 2,000 journal titles from more than 50 disciplines. It contains complete backfiles of scholarly journals starting with the first issues, many of which date back from the 1800s. Although the majority of titles do not have the most recent 3 to 5 years available in full text, there are some which have the current issues available.
Note: Additional content has been permanently added to JSTOR, including archived journal collections and primary resources. Searches performed using the databases page link will include results from the additional sources, as will the link above.
Time Period: 19th century to present
Sources: Provides the full text for approximately 2,000 journals.
Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Law, Mobile, Music, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology
Primary Materials: Citations, Journal Articles, Reviews
Description: Professional Development Collection provides indexing and access to education journals geared towards education professionals.
Time Period: 1965 to present
Sources: Indexes roughly 700 journals.
Subject Headings: Education
Primary Materials: Journal Articles
If you've used APA PsycInfo and ERIC in the past, you'll notice that they have a new user interface. Don't worry! Most of the changes are intuitive, and there are some new features you'll love.
This brief video from EBSOhost (the database provider of APA PsycInfo and ERIC) highlights the use of the new interface.
These are the most important databases in the fields of special education and applied behavior analysis:
Description: PsycInfo is a key database in the field of psychology. Includes information of use to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
Time Period: 1887 to present
Sources: Indexes more than 2,500 journals.
Subject Headings: Education, Mobile, Psychology, Social Sciences (Psychology)
Scholarly or Popular: Scholarly
Information Included: Abstracts, Citations, Linked Full Text
Description: ERIC EBSCOhost is a key database in the field of education, providing access to bibliographic records of journal and non-journal literature. About one third of the content is accessible in full text from within the database.
Time Period: 1966-present
Sources: Indexes more than 650 journals.
Subject Headings: Education, English & Linguistics, Mobile, Music
Primary Materials: Abstracts, Books/e-books, Dissertation and Theses, Grey Literature, Journal Articles, Reference Resources, Report
Description: OneSearch is a tool that cross searches much of the content our databases and other online sources. You can search across many collections in one search box simplifying the resource discovery process.
Time Period: 1600 to Present
Sources:
Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Music, News, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology
Primary Materials: Abstracts, Citations, Government Documents, Journal Articles, Books
Other databases to try:
Description: Cross searching of Science Citation Index Expanded back to 1973, Social Sciences Citation Index back to 1981/82, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index back to 1976.
Time Period: 1900-present
Sources:
Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Law, Music, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology
Primary Materials: Abstracts, Citations, Journal Articles
Description: Professional Development Collection provides indexing and access to education journals geared towards education professionals.
Time Period: 1965 to present
Sources: Indexes roughly 700 journals.
Subject Headings: Education
Primary Materials: Journal Articles
Description: Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection provides access to scholarly journals and magazines related to child development, cognitive science, educational psychology, and criminology.
Time Period: 1930 to present
Sources: Indexes almost 600 peer-reviewed titles of which almost 500 are full text.
Subject Headings: Psychology, Sciences, Social Sciences
Primary Materials: journal Articles, Magazine Articles
You might describe it in a phrase or a question.
Essentially you're identifying the most important words in your topic description. Often these are nouns.
The order isn't important.
These other terms may come from your head, a thesaurus, or something else you've read that's on-topic.
The subject field of a library database is a great place to look for useful search terms.
After all, research is an iterative process -- you're unlikely to find the best results with just one search.
When you're using a database, and can't find a link to the full text of an article, look for a Find It @ Ball State button, sometimes under "Access Options."
Find It helps you to search the Libraries' other databases and subscriptions to see if the full text is available through another resource.
To use Find It, click on the red Find It @ Ball State button. (Sometimes you must click on "Access Options" to see "Find it @ Ball State.")
If we DO have full text access to the article, a page will be displayed with options for access under "Full Text Format Options." The typical options are:
If we do NOT have immediate full text access to the article, the OneSearch record for the article will be displayed.