Academic Search Complete Overview

Academic Search Complete: An Overview

Academic Search Complete is a great place to start your research. In this tutorial, you'll learn to:

• perform effective searches
• quickly evaluate results
• apply search filters to limit results

Use the arrows below to navigate through the tutorial, or click the Contents button at the top left to skip to another section.

Academic Search Complete: An Overview

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Academic Search Complete: An Overview

What is Academic Search Complete?

Academic Search Complete (ASC) is one of our most popular library databases for a number of reasons:

• Multi-disciplinary coverage
• Contains both scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles and popular magazine and newspaper articles
• Full-text of journal articles typically not available in web (e.g. Google) searches

Academic Search Complete: An Overview

Accessing Academic Search Complete

From the UNM Libraries home page on your right:

• Click on the A in the Databases, by Title, box.
• Scroll down and click on Academic Search Complete.

Searching Academic Search Complete

In this guide, we'll look for articles about the relationship between disease related deaths and ZIKV, commonly known as the Zika virus

Before you search:

• Think about what kinds of sources or formats you will need
• Be strategic about your keywords

Searching Academic Search Complete

Getting Started

1. Start with a simple search for "disease related deaths" in the first search field. 

 2. Click on Search.

Searching Academic Search Complete

Revising Searches

You may have noticed, when you use broad keywords like "Disease related deaths" many search results show up. Through use of a boolean operator you can widen or focus results. By clicking on the AND button, you can choose to refine the search using "AND" or "NOT", and widen the search using "OR".

Let's add a few more keywords to focus our search. Try AND "zika virus" OR "ZIKV" in the second and third search fields.

If you want more information on how to use boolean operators, check out the video "Using Boolean Operators" from CSUSB's John M. Pfau Library

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw9Djl_0vK4

Refining Results in Academic Search Complete

Using Filters

If you look on the left side of the search results page, you'll see various options for narrowing your list of results, like:

• Publication Date
• Source Type
• Full Text

Scan through the list of Results and notice the Titles and Subjects (these may provide keywords for future searches.

There are also details about each article's Source and Source Type (periodical/magazine, newspaper, academic journal, etc.)

Can you determine how the results are sorted or ranked?

Refining Results in Academic Search Complete

Evaluating Search Results

You can learn more about each item by clicking on the title and reading the abstract.

Let's start a new search (find the new search button in the upper left-hand corner).

Enter the article title "Planet's population on the move, infections on the rise". The article should show up in your results. Look to the right of the title for the magnifying class icon:

Rolling your mouse over this icon will bring up more information about this article, including the abstract.

Refining Results in Academic Search Complete

Finding the Full-Text

Notice that some of the results have a link to the PDF Full Text or HTML Full Text. But some display this icon:

Clicking on this icon will help you locate the full-text of the article. Note: If you click this button you will open up a new tab that directs you outside of this tutorial.

• If we have electronic access to this article, you will see a screen offering options to link to that article.
• Sometimes we won't have electronic access to the article right away. In that case, you will see links to our Interlibrary Loan or Library Express service that you can use to order the article.

Refining Results in Academic Search Complete

Tools in Academic Search Complete

In addition to finding the full text, Academic Search Complete has a variety of tools that can assist in collecting information, building a bibliography, or printing text.

After clicking on the article title "Planet's population on the move, infections on the rise" notice the tool bar at the top right of the page.

Click the Cite button on the tool bar to find how to cite the source in a variety of formats.

Click the E-mail button at the top right tool bar to send a link of the page for further reference.

Certificate

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