Find Information at Bowman
Searching the catalog doesn't find everything we have! Check out the tabs below to search for more specific types of information.
Best Resources for this Course
Primary & Secondary Sources
Here is a short video that breaks down the differences between these two types of sources:
Search Tips
Bowman Library has a large variety of books and ebooks that are chosen for their relevance to the courses offered. You can access ebooks directly from the library website whether you are off or on campus. Books and ebooks are good for finding overviews and history of your topic. You don't need to read the whole book to get the information you need for your project; often one chapter of a scholarly book will cover the information you need.
Use Boolean operators:
Use AND in a search to:
- narrow your results
- tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
Use OR in a search to:
- connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms)
- broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
Use NOT in a search to:
- exclude words from your search
- narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
Don't forget about filtering your search results ! Filters in the catalog are located on the left side. You can narrow your search results to format type (ex. books only), specific years, and more.
The location of filters in each database varies, but look at the sides of the database you are searching for filtering options. Filters help narrow your results and increase the relevancy of your results.
Finding Journal Articles
Often your professor will ask you to use scholarly articles, academic articles, or peer-reviewed articles. These are generally all the same thing. They are written by scholars who are experts in their fields and are usually tied to a college or university. They are great for:
- Credible and trustworthy information
- Recent findings and research topics in the field
- Research studies, tables, and data
- Bibliographies and reference lists.
Find Journal Articles about your topic:
- Academic Search Premier (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Provides searching of over 8,500 journals, including peer-reviewed, across a wide range of topics. coverage: 1975 to present - JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A full-text collection of more than 400 journals in business and the liberal arts, with especially strong coverage of business, finance, economics, history, regional studies, education, and sociology. (Our subscription includes the Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences IV, Business I, and Business II collections.) JSTOR is notable for the high quality of the journals it includes. The most recent three to five years of each journal are usually excluded from JSTOR, however.
- Business Source Complete (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Leading scholarly business database with over 1,300 publications, including peer-reviewed journals. Covers all business disciplines, including marketing, management, accounting, finance, and economics. Also includes financial data, company profiles, industry reports, market research reports, SWOT analyses, and more.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowProvides access to scholarly literature "across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations." Note that many articles contain only the citation and no full text; if full text is not available, you can order articles or books via Interlibrary Loan.
Background Information
The following databases are good sources for background information about your topic.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text reference books in 20 subject areas. It includes over 180 titles and 65,000 images "powered by a network of cross-references that cut across topics, titles and publishers to provide answers - and new connections - in context." coverage: Varies
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowProvides original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on current events, including summaries and bibliographies. Controversial topics are addressed in a balanced, unbiased manner in the Congressional Quarterly tradition.
- Biography in Context This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive database of biographical information on more than one million people throughout history and around the world. It combines biographies from 70 Gale Group publications, the complete Marquis Who's Who, Merriam-Webster's collegiate and biographical dictionaries, and full-text articles from over 250 periodicals. The Biography Research Guide will help you get started doing biographical research.
