One place to start is by using the search box right on the library homepage. You can type in a word or phrase and the search will take you over to the database Academic Search Premier. Academic Search Premier is a very broad database that is a good place to start your research journey.
Another option is to browse the available databases by subject. If you are wanting a database with more specialized results than Academic Search Premier, try using one of these categories to find a database better suited for your needs.
For searching the journals, the basic search box can only search by title. So, to use this box you need to know part or all of the title to search for and be able to pull up.
If you don't have a journal title, click the "Advanced Search" button.
That will take you to this page, where you can click the "Browse" button and browse the available journals by alphabet.
Use the highlighted box to type in keyword(s), title(s), author(s), etc. to find books in Baker's library holdings.
One of the ways you can perform an "advanced" search is by searching by Subject. Subjects are terms attached to databases by professionals that specifically describe was an article is about. Opposed to keyword searches which bring up results related to your search, subject searches specifically bring up results about what you search.
You can also use multiple search terms and try your hand at the Boolean operators. Using AND will search for articles that include both terms you use, using OR will include articles that include both or just one of the terms you search, and using NOT will exclude whatever you put in the second search bar.
You can search databases by subject, too! With databases often having hundreds of thousands of results, narrowing down those results by doing subject searches can be really helpful.
There are even more ways you can limit searches! The ones I recommend are choosing "Full-Text" if you don't have time to do an ILL, adjusting the date if you want to make sure you have the latest information, and making sure you're only getting results in a language(s) you're fluent in.
Databases will give you access to thousands of articles, which can be a LOT to sift through. Take a look at all of the filtering options here that you can use to narrow down the number of results you'll get.
You can narrow down your catalog results, too! And remember, if you're specifically looking for a book in Baker's library, make sure to have "Baker University Library" checked like it is below.
