Public Health: How to Search Scholarly Databases

Agriculture, food, and nutrition

Reproductive health and women

Organizational development and leadership

Social sciences

Other subject-specific databases

Most databases allow the use of AND, OR and NOT to broaden or narrow and search. 

• AND will narrow the search to include only records with both terms. 
• OR with broaden the search to include records with either term.
• NOT will narrow the search to exclude records with one of the terms.

Truncation:  You can use an * at the end of a word stem to broaden your search to include related terms.  For example, to search for child, children or childhood use the search term child*

Putting quotes "" around words allows you to search for a phrase.  For example, searching language development, without quotes, finds records with both the word 'language' and 'development' somewhere in the record.  Searching "language development", with quotes, only find records with the phrase "language development".

Example: How does bilingualism affect language development in children?

NOTE:  When you begin doing advanced searching in a new database, look for the Help or Information sections to determine how that database works, and how it may differ from other databases with which you are familiar.

An excellent way of discovering new and relevant resources is to use the articles that you have already identified as important works in you search.  The articles and resources in the references or bibliography can point you to other relevant sources that were published prior to the article of interest. 

But how do you find more recent articles that have used and cited the article of interest in their work?

Web of Science is a database of scholarly literature that also tracks citations and allows citation searching.  In the search results window you can:

If you just have a citation for an article, you can check for access through Cornell University Library:

1. Tutorial on searching the library catalog for the journal title. 

2. Search the library catalog for the article title using the Articles & Full Text link or the main library catalog search field.

3. Search Google or Google Scholar for the article title. 

   This is not a comprehensive search, but it may give you full-text article access on campus. 

4. Do an e-journal search for the journal title (for online journals only).

Use the Get it! Cornell links wherever you see them!

If you have citations for specific articles, check the Library Catalog to see if we subscribe to the journal that contains the article. The Catalog will show whether or not we have access to the electronic version and/or the print version. Note that this catalog also searches WorldCat, a database of library holdings from around the world.  So if the Cornell library collection doesn't have what you're looking for, this catalog will tell you who does, and link you to Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan options (see below).

If we don't have it, we can get it for you for free in a few days! Request materials through Borrow Direct or Interlibrary Loan by clicking the Request Item button.

Reference librarians are here to help you - so please contact us with any questions!

If you're off-campus and want access to full-text, you can either go to the resource via the library website or use the hand Access Anywhere tool.

Using either method, you will be prompted to log in with your netID and password to gain access to our licensed resources.