Academic Search FullTEXT: A general subject academic database which indexes and abstracts several thousand periodicals and includes full text articles for over a third of these periodicals. Full text may go back as far as 1990 and indexing to 1984.

ERIC: Includes Resources in Education Index (RIE) indexing research and technical reports and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) indexing over 750 education periodicals.

CINAHL with Headings: Provides indexing for over 1200 nursing, allied health and health sciences journals. Also includes access to other health care materials.

NOTE: Full text for selected CINAHL titles is available in Academic Search FullTEXT. To see any full text availability, select both databases when searching.

SEARCH SUBJECT is another well-focused searching method. By using a subject heading, the major topic of all articles will be your topic. You can further limit your results with refine search.

KEYWORD SEARCH is a broad search strategy which looks for a keyword/s or a phrase. 
Keyword searching can useful when you have a very narrow topic or you do not know the appropriate subject heading. Many marginal articles may be included in your results. You may use the Boolean operators AND, NOT, and OR. 

NATURAL LANGUAGE SEARCH uses searches for a phrase or sentence. The more times your words appear, the more relevant the article. The most relevant articles will be first. Although you can limit to peer reviewed journals, this is not a recommended method of efficient searching.
 

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LIMITERS allow you to refine your search. They are useful for combining different research terms or for limiting your results to specific periodical types or dates. All limiters may not be available for all types of searches. The Advanced search offers the most opportunity to use limiters.
 

THE MOST COMMON LIMITERS: Limit to:  Peer Reviewed, Full Text, Skagit Valley College Collection Magazine: Search in only one periodical Date Published:  Limit your search to certain dates Special limiters :  Periodical type, Number of pages, Cover story, Articles with images Fields: All fields or Author, Article title, Subject, Abstract, Journal title, etc. Boolean operators:  AND, OR,  NOT

Advanced Search Example:
Find: "Mars" in SUBJECT and "water" in ABSTRACT and "life" in ALL FIELDS
(Choose ) Peer Review, Full text, Skagit Valley College Collection, Number of pages: 2-
Limits your results to scholarly journal articles, over 2 pages long, and available today.

Keyword Search Examples:

drugs and abuse	articles must include both words
happy or sad	articles only need to have one search term
irony not humor	articles must include irony and can't include humor

(Choose ) Peer Review Full text Skagit Valley College Collection 1990-1995
Limits your results to older scholarly journal articles, available today.

Natural Language Example: 
Type "rising tuition costs in the United States". Searches for each word separately. 
(Choose ) Peer Review, Full text, Skagit Valley College Collection, 1999-2001
Limits your results to current scholarly journal articles, available today.
 

SPECIAL INTEREST RESOURCES: Image Collections: Full page printable images : Photos Of People, Natural Science Photos, Photos Of Places, Historical Photos, Maps, Flags Company Directory: Basic business and financial information about companies with links to web, job, and patent searches. (fee based)

Use the Wild Card ? and Truncation * symbols to search for words with unknown characters, variant spellings or different endings. 

Re?d	searches for the words read, reed, or reid
walk*	searches for the words walk, walked, walking, or walkway