Here you will find links to resources that may be helpful to you in your Educational Leadership studies.
1. Do an article title “phrase search” in Google Scholar and use the “Full Text @ Your Library” link.
2. Use the Journal Title search in the LibrarySearch catalog and use the drill-down method (see this tutorial for more details).
3. Find the article on the open web and use the UMS Libraries Proxy Bookmarklet to get past the paywall.
4. Place an ILL (Interlibrary Loan) request (see this tutorial for more details).
You can also check to see what resources are available through your school district, local public library, state library, etc.
It is good practice to begin your research by brainstorming some possible search terms as topics are often referred to by different terms, such as “instruct” for “teach.” Only by using different combinations of similar search terms will you find the most information about your topic. An easy way to do this is to list the main subject terms, usually nouns, for your thesis sentence and then brainstorm some alternative keywords for these main terms.
When brainstorming consider:
1. Using a thesaurus or specialized encyclopedia to find like terms.
2. Trying an internet search engine such as Google or a broad tool like Wikipedia to find alternative terms.
3. Checking the database you’re using to see what subject terms match the topic(s) you are interested in. Subject terms can be found by clicking on an article’s title and looking at the subject terms listed in the article record, or by using an in-database thesaurus. See this tutorial to learn how a thesaurus in a database works.
4. Thinking of broader and narrower concepts.
5. Including different forms of the keyword (“educate” for “educating”).
1. Never pay for an article. The university library either owns it or can get it for you.
2. Begin your search with library article databases.
3. Choose good keywords; experiment with various keywords; this is 80% of your success.
4. Once you start reading the existing literature, it will become clear how to construct your literature review.
5. Use a system to organize your articles.
6. Contact your librarian for any type of question involving any of this. Email, call, visit.
If you would like help with your research, you can contact the College of Education & Human Development’s librarian (see the Librarian box in the left-hand column).
Live Chat reference help is available via the yellow Chat with a Librarian bar at the bottom of this page. (Chat hours are listed here.)
