Welcome to the Academic Search Premier tutorial By the end of this tutorial you should be able to: Do a basic search to find references Use search techniques to make your results more relevant , print or save your results

Step 1: Accessing Academic Search Premier (ASP) Go to the student home page and login with the student login ID and password

Select Resources Online from the list of applications

Select E-Resources

Select your subject (e.g. Sport) and then select ‘Find Resources’ (ASP appears on the list for all subjects)

Now select Academic Search Premier from the list

You will now see the list of all EBSCO databases that we subscribe to. Scroll down the list and select Academic Search Premier.

Step 2: Search strategy Before you start searching any database you should plan your search strategy in advance as it is a more efficient way of managing your time. Keywords Before you start searching, think about keywords for your given subject. If your topic is: Discuss the effects on health of excessive alcohol consumption Your keywords would be: health alcohol consumption TIP: Authors use many different terms which mean the same thing. Remember, the computer will only search for what you tell it to search for. If there are other words that mean the same (or similar) things as your search terms you must search for these too. Think about alternatives (and the different types of effects that you know alcohol consumption may cause). For effects you might search for: liver disease obesity hangovers For alcohol you might use: alcohol alcohol consumption drinking TIP ON FINDING KEYWORDS: You may find it useful to do some preliminary reading in textbooks and encyclopaedias which will help you identify some keywords, and perhaps also key authors.

In the search box type liver disease and select search. Make a note of the number of results your search finds.

Your search results should look similar to this - you should find that you have over results.

Step 3: Broadening your search The term or will broaden a search and include items where the authors have used different terms, or where you want to search for different effects of alcohol consumption. Example: liver disease or hangovers

In the first search box type liver disease or hangovers. Click on search and make a note of the number of results you get.

Items containing either word or phrase have now been searched for and your search results list will have now have increased to over You can add more alternative words if you want to widen your search more e.g. cirrhosis (a disease of the liver), obesity, crime…

Step 4: Combining your search terms Searching for liver disease will give you everything the database has on liver disease (causes, incidence, symptoms etc). You therefore need to be more specific about the subject you are looking for. To do this you can combine different search terms together. The term and will narrow your search

Search for liver disease or hangovers and alcohol consumption. Make a note of the number of results you get.

You have now searched for items containing either liver disease or hangovers, as well as alcohol consumption. Using ‘and’ will usually result in fewer but more relevant hits. Have a look at the result numbers you wrote down and see how the number of results changed. You should now only have around 300 articles. (This is clearly still too many articles but is a great improvement on 16000!)

Step 5: Refining your search When you have entered all the search terms you want to use you will still often need to cut down on the amount of results you have. To refine your search you might want to: –Remove articles which do not have the full text available in Academic Search Premier –Remove articles that are not in peer-reviewed (scholarly) journals –Remove all the older articles or select a range of years TIP: It is usually best to refine your search by selecting one criteria at a time. Selecting multiple criteria can sometimes mean you get no results.

This screen below shows how to refine your results to full text results and peer- reviewed scholarly journals only. Once you’ve ticked the full text and peer reviewed boxes select Update Results. TIP: If you get too many results you can refine your search further by searching only in the abstract (the brief summary of the article) – use the pull down menu next to Select a field to do this. You can also use the date slider to the right of the screen to refine by date. There are also more ‘Search Options’ to the right of the page that you can select to refine the search further.

Step 6: Reading your articles To help you decide which articles are relevant to you look at the citation and abstract. Do this by clicking on the title of the article. You will be given all the information about the article. This will include the title, authors, journal name, year, volume, issue etc. For most articles you will also be able to read an abstract, a summary of what the article is about. If you can access the full text of the article you will see a PDF Full Text or a HTML Full text link. TIP: If you click on pdf you will get a document that looks identical to the original print version, including any pictures, graphs etc. These can be slow to load. If you click on html you will get just the words of the article with no pictures.

Step 7: Printing, saving and ing your results You can print, save or one or more articles. To print, save or an individual article open up the article. Click on the appropriate link on the top of the page

If you want to print, save or multiple articles use the folder. Go to your list of results. Click on Add to folder for each of the articles you want to , save or print.

When you have selected everything you want click on Folder

Tick the articles you wish to print, save or . Click on the appropriate option at the top of the page and follow the instructions.

Step 8: Search histories and saving your searches To see your search history and to save any searches go back to your results list (if you are in the Folder, click Back to view your results list). Click on Search History/Alerts. You can view, print, re-run and save your searches.

Congratulations – you’ve come to the end of this tutorial If you need more advice about constructing your search, such as choosing keywords, or how to combine searches, or if you have any other related queries, please contact ALT staff. We hope you enjoyed the tutorial