Global Social Change

Use AND and OR to make database searches more effective.

Connect different terms with AND

• war AND children
• women AND migration

Connect similar terms with OR

• emigration OR immigration
• transnational OR international

Search for variant endings with truncation:

The truncation symbol is usually an asterisk * in the databases.

• global* = global, globalize, globalization, etc.
• immigra* = immigrant, immigration, immigrate, etc.

Combine AND and OR in a single search, using parentheses to group your terms, like an equation. This is sometimes called nesting or grouping:

• Thailand AND (women's rights OR women's movement)

Note that some databases require quotation marks around any terms you want to search as a phrase:

• "water resources" AND "El Salvador"

Subject terms: When you find a relevant article, look at the subject terms (sometimes called descriptors) that are used to describe it. They may be useful in a new search.

Try using some of these search words in Lesley Library's @LL Search, your one stop shop for searching within all of Lesley's holdings for relevant material. For more search tips, look here.

To search within specialized databases, consider the following:

• Agricola (Agricultural articles & more)
• Environment Complete*
• Gender Studies Database*
• GreenFILE (Environmental articles & more)*
• ERIC (Journal articles and original research reports in education.) *
• MEDLINE (Health and medicine)*
• Health Reference Center Academic

* Tip: You can cross-search these EBSCO databases. From within one database, click the "Choose databases" link, above to the search box, and check the boxes to add additional databases to your search.

Find a Database by Name or Subject/Discipline.

If you require an article that is not within Lesley's or FLO's collection, try requesting through InterLibrary Loan. Make sure you look through Lesley's full ILL policy beforehand.

On-campus users at Lesley University will see additional links in Google Scholar search results which facilitate access to Lesley's resources.

Off-campus users will need to configure your affiliation:

• To set your preferences, click on Scholar Preferences (http://scholar.google.com/scholar_preferences)
• Type "Lesley" in the 'Library Links' section and select "Lesley University Library - Find It @ Lesley Univ". 
• Click Save preferences.