Student Research Center
A Big Database That's Right For The Task
What is it?
Student Research Center is an Ebsco database designed for middle and high school students. This is an excellent database for any school project; however, to make it work for you, we must first discover how it works in general.
Narrow Your Search To Get Better Results
Ebsco is a big and powerful database that pulls high quality information from millions of sources. But remember, one major advantage of using a database is to get fewer, higher quality results. So how do we do that with such an awesome database.
Limit Your Source Types
If you are doing a current events report, perhaps begin by only searching logically current events oriented sources such as Magazines, News Papers, and Radio & TV Transcripts.
Search By Topic
Do you know the topic you would like to research but are not sure what key words to use to narrow it down? Are you receiving too many results and are overwhelmed with information. Than limit your search by "Topic." Choose the general and then sub topics to improve your search.
Limit By Date, Reading Level, and Full Text
Again, you are working on a current event research project. Limit your results by date; anything from more than two years ago is not very current.
Be Advanced
Use the Advanced Search feature at the top of the screen to further limit your search. Utilize Boolean Operators, select high quality publications, and search within full text articles.
Learn The Basics Too
You just found an awesome article about the current state of Egyptian politics. It sounds interesting and is right on topic. You just are not sure where Egypt is and whether they are truly a democracy or not. Maybe you should begin with a basic encyclopedia entry to learn the basics. Lucky for you the Student Research Center has a Dictionary and the Columbia Encyclopedia built right into the search.
Don't Lose What You Just Found
Today you are trying to find four to six great articles, but you still need to read them, find quotes, and cite them. How do I get back to this awesome article. Well right within Student Research Center you can create an account to save information to folders and retrieve it later. You can also print, email, and cite the article from within the database.
The BCMS Library
Email: nathan.miller@lsr7.net
Website: lmc.lsr7.org/bcms
Location: 1201 NE Colbern Rd, Lee's Summit, MO, United States
Phone: 816-986-3193
Twitter: @BCMSLibrarian