If you're struggling to find information, try these ideas:
Research Starters provide quick overviews of a broad topic. Research Starters appear at the very top of your DragonQuest search results if one happens to be available on your topic. The following image shows the location of a Research Starter on the broad topic "drug abuse."
Many Research Starters contain additional links to topics and resources, along with recommended search strategies to help you locate additional information or explore related topics.
You can use the "Refine Results" area in DragonQuest to limit your search results to a specific type of resource OR narrow down our list of databases by the types of materials they contain. As an example, if you're looking to identify a community problem, you might benefit by browsing our collection of electronic newspapers. The following image shows the A to Z list dropdown menus to help you select databases which only contain certain types of resources.
Consider using some of the following "community problem" keywords in DragonQuest:
A keyword search is the broadest search you can conduct inside our discovery service. For more information on search and retrieval in DragonQuest, you may also want to consult our DragonQuest tutorial.
Advanced Search features allow you to use Boolean operators to adjust your search settings
Boolean searching allows you to include or exclude specific terms from your search to help you more easily locate materials. This is done by using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. These dropdowns are available at the top of your search results. A brief explanation of each Boolean operator:
Using a series of dropdown menus, you can also select which specific fields of an item’s record that you want to search, such as title or author.
When browsing the web for information, consider the following search strategies:
Recommended websites include:
The SCRAAP test is an easy way to remember how to evaluate sources in general. SCRAAP means...
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating information to keep a sense of self-awareness:
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating currency of information:
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating the relevance of information:
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating the authority of information:
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating the accuracy of information:
Some questions to ask yourself when evaluating the purpose of information: