This guide will walk you through the research process with recommended course-specific resources. A list of some recommended resources included in this guide is below.
Don't forget to check out our other Research Guides for any interdisciplinary research.
Screen reader user? Follow these links to get instructions on using the Library Search interface to find books and journal articles.
The most commonly used operators are: AND, OR, and NOT. When used in all caps, search engines (Library Search, databases, and Google) recognize them as a specific function. These are best described by using Venn diagrams.
Click the tabs at the top of this box to learn more about each operator.
If you are researching something with a name that varies depending on the context, you can use OR to make sure the system is searching all possible versions of that term. For example, some information on post-secondary education uses the term "university" while others use "higher education." If you want both, use OR to combine your terms.
Note: This is the default operator search engines use to combine your search terms. That's why some results will only have one of your search terms unless you specify otherwise.
If you are researching how nutrition information is shared on social media, use AND to make sure you only receive results with both terms in the item record.
If you are searching with a term that is part of a larger term not relevant to your research or that term is also used in a different field, you may need to use NOT to remove results. For example, if you are searching for the portrayal of the traditional concept of witches (crone, pointy hat, flies on a broom with a black cat) in the media and use the term "witch," you may receive results about The Witcher, a book, video game, and Netflix series. To remove these results, use NOT.
To use NOT in Google searches, use - (minus sign).
Though some Advanced Search features of search engines allow you to have multiple search boxes with drop-down menus for Boolean Operators, you can use multiple operators in single line searches.
( ) Just like in math, parentheses are their own groupings. This part of the search is done before it is combined with any other part of the search.
" " Quotation marks make sure that two or more words are in that exact order or are found with that exact spelling.
* An asterisk functions as truncation. It can be used to find words with multiple endings. For example, teach* will search for teach, teacher, teachers, teaches, and teaching.
? A question mark functions as a wildcard. It can be used to find words where only one letter is changed. For example, wom?n will search for women, woman, womyn, and womxn. Another example is Latin? will search for Latina, Latino, Latinx, and Latine.
Both of the searches above will function the same even though they are written differently.
Google Scholar automatically searches for synonyms and mostly understands the context of your keywords. It does not have many search filters, so it can be more difficult to sort through results than in Library Search and databases. Once you link it to WMU Libraries, you can see which articles are accessible through our library databases.
You can request materials from other libraries through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). As long as you have the citation information (author, title, date, publisher information), we can probably find it for you. To place an ILL request and learn more about how it works, click the link below.