We are here to help you with any aspect of your research. Please take advantage of the library’s resources and don’t hesitate to ask for assistance should you need it.
The following are resources you may find helpful as you complete your writing assignments for this class.
Searching by keyword can be a flexible way to find a large number of results. You can use keyword searching as a way to find targeted results: slang, jargon, and new terms work well in keyword searches.
you are using a term from a pre-defined controlled vocabulary determined by that database. Many databases feature a subject-specific thesaurus of subject terms that relate back to the contents in that database. You will only receive articles that were assigned the subject heading you searched with. For this reason, articles found via subject heading searches can be very reliable. The subject will appear in the record item's subject heading or descriptor field.
Searching by subject can be a very specific way to find targeted results within a specific discipline or research area. This can be very beneficial to your research; however, searching by subject only works if you know which subject terms to search with.
Materials in the Woodbury University Library are arranged in several collections, including Main Stacks, Annex Stacks, Reference, Oversize, Special Collections, and others.
To locate an item in the library’s collection, use the call number and location you find in the library’s online catalog , which is listed under the "Holding Summary" section in the item’s record.
Example: For the book: Cats : the art of Martin Leman:
The Location indicates that the book is in Burbank Main Stacks and it's call number is ND479 .L54 D775 2004. The green checkmark in the image below indicates that the book is available.
While many databases have what we call "full-text" (meaning entire articles included in the database), others have only citations or abstracts (without providing you with the text of the entire article). So, what do you do when you find a description or a summary of an article in a database that seems PERFECT for your research, but the database does not include the full-text?
We do have a couple of solutions to that problem for you. First, you may notice a button next to the article citations in databases. It looks like this:
If you click on that button next to an article for which you'd like to find full-text, you will perform a new search in ALL of our library databases for that article. If a match is found, you will be taken into the new database directly to the article you need.
Occasionally, this search will find a partial match for your article. When that happens, it is usually because one database's data does not match up completely with the other database's data. In this case, you will land on a screen listing the name of the journal or magazine containing your article along with the name(s) of library databases that MAY contain your article. Next to the database name will be a link entitled "journal." Clicking on that journal link will take you to a page in the new database where you can browse through the entire contents of specific journal issues. Generally, you will be able to find the article you are looking for using this method.
If a match is not found, you will land on a page offering you the option of completing an interlibrary loan request. Click on the "request this item via interlibrary loan" link. A new window will open with an online form for you to complete. You can just cut and paste your article information (helpfully available at the top of the previous page) into the appropriate fields in the form.
Submit the form, and our interlibrary loan department will get the article for you from another library - usually at no charge to you.