LibGuides: SOC 311: Social Use of Space: Find Articles

Choose a Database

The Illinois Tech Library Search tool is a good place to start looking for general information. It searches multiple of the library databases at the same time.

Illinois Tech Library Advanced Search
Find books, articles, journals, and more from any of Illinois Tech's libraries, both online and in print.

You can also look in a subject specific database. The databases listed below are good places to begin your searches for this class. Pick one or two to start with and see what you find!

Business Source Complete
This is IIT's largest business-subject database, providing full-text coverage of more than 2,200 scholarly business, management and economics journals. Use this to search for scholarly articles about corporate spaces and their link to creativity or innovation.
APA PsycINFO
This database contains scholarly literature in the behavioral sciences and mental health, produced by the American Psychological Association. Use this to find articles about how our physical environment affects our mental or emotional state.
Academic Search Complete
Contains more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, the majority being peer-reviewed journals. It covers a wide range of topics and subjects, so it is a good place to start researching a topic.

Database Searching

Using the keywords, synonyms, and narrower and broader terms that you brainstormed, enter your search terms into the search boxes of your chosen search tool.

Connect your keywords using Boolean operators: "AND", "OR", and "NOT".

Boolean operators tell your database how to connect your search terms together.

AND: Connecting two search terms using AND tells the database that you want both terms to be in your results. This will give you fewer results.
OR: Connecting two search terms using OR tells the database you are okay with either term. This will give you more results.
NOT: Search terms that come after NOT will be excluded from your results. You might want to use this if you are noticing that a lot of your results are on a different topic - for example, if you are looking for information about the city of Portland in Maine and results about Portland in Oregon keep showing up, you might put in "NOT Oregon" to eliminate those results.

Most databases will allow you to filter results. This can be very useful if you have certain requirements for your sources.

By date: Use this filter if you only want articles within a certain time range. Especially useful if you need more current sources.
By type: Use this filter if you need a certain type of source - for example, something published in an academic journal or a newspaper.
By peer review: Both the library search tool and other databases will allow you to search for exclusively peer-reviewed articles.

One limiter you may see that we don't recommend using is one that says "Full Text" or "Available online". This is because none of the search tools you use are able to search all of the resources the library has access to. There may be an article that's perfect for your topic that the library has access to, but not through the database you're currently searching in - and you wouldn't find it, because you'd selected "Full Text".

Once you find an article you think would be useful, click on the title in the results list. Depending on the article you've selected and the database, you may immediately be able to read the article, or you may need to click on a couple more links to find a PDF to read. If you encounter any issues accessing an article, contact the library for help.

Sometimes, our library may not have immediate online or physical access to an article - that doesn't mean you can't access it for free though! Galvin Library participates in a system called interlibrary loan, and through this, you can place requests for articles we don't own. Interlibrary loan is free for students, and articles will be delivered to you as PDFs.

To learn more about interlibrary loan, see our FAQ entry, How can I get articles or books through interlibrary loan?

We always want to look through our results, and look beyond just the first three or four. Unlike with Google, a library database will have useful, relevant articles - even on the second, third, or fourth page.

Examine your results to determine whether the keywords you're using are good, or if you want to adjust them. You might find other keywords in your search results that are also useful for you.

Research is an iterative process, which means we will repeat steps with slight variations, refining as we go. There's no single "perfect" search - make sure you try different things out!