Finding what Baylor Libraries owns is much easier with the OneSearch tool you'll find on the Libraries' home page. You can find books (print and electronic); journal articles from popular, professional, and scholarly sources, movies on DVD and from streaming services, sheet music, and much more. You'll find so many results, that you'll want to think about using some of the limiters and filters on the side bar so you aren't overwhelmed by the results!
You will get some hands-on experience with OneSearch in our session. Below is an introduction to using OneSearch you can refer back to asyou need it.
So you've found a book or two and now you've got some topic ideas and a few keywords, where do you go from here? A great place to start is by searching through OneSearch, where you can locate articles published in popular, professional, and scholarly journals. Journals have the advantage of presenting more current information than is found in books (see the Timeline) and because articles are shorter than books the information in them is more focused.
Example Search
For the purposes of this tutorial, let's assume you are preparing a speech for your communications class and you've decided to speak on good communications for better college roommate relations. Choose a few of the keywords and type them into the OneSearch box on the library home page:
Your result list will include books and magazine and journal articles (but not newspaper articles) arranged by relevancy. You want to keep the tone of the speech light, not scholarly, for the audience of your classmates so the second and third articles in the result list look good.
The articles are even available online, just click the Full Text Online link and you'll see the options for getting the full text of the article:
There may be more than one listing under the Links to content column, choose any one that includes the date of your article in the Dates available column.
You may find an entry like the one below where the article isn't full text online. Simply copy the name of the journal and paste it back into the search box to see if we have it in print. In this case, we do own the Journal of College Student Personnel and it will be on the second floor of the Moody Library.
in the grey box on the left of any result screen, OneSearch has several ways you can refine or limit your results (see image below). You can use the checkboxes in these sections to select an option and reduce the total number of search results you get. Experiment with these as you work with OneSearch to see which ones are most helpful on any given research project.
Remember to uncheck any boxes when you start a new search. If you are searching for a current news issue, you'll also want to uncheck the box next to Exclude newspaper articles.
I recommend Gale Opposing Viewpoints to you as a good starting point for general topics because your search results will be clearly identified by the type of information it is: News, Viewpoints, Academic Journals, Videos, Magazines, etc. This identification will help you choose the best sources for the work you are doing.
Combines several sources of information into a single database covering news, current topics, "big issues " and controversies.