Master's Education Research Guide

• Students will discover how to use the library catalog in order to find books and other resources.

• Students will discover how to use periodical databases in order to find articles and other resources.

• Students will analyze an article record and bibliography in order to expand their search to find resources.

• Students will describe how to use Journal Finder in order to find the full text of an article.

• Students will recognize how to use the Interlibrary Loan service in order to request an item unavailable from the library.

You will use the Library Catalog in order to find books, e-books, DVD's, and other materials for your research. The link to the Library Catalog in Worldcat can be found either on the main page of the library or through the Databases A-Z link. When off campus you will need to log into the Library Catalog, but then you will have full access to all e-books as well as location information for physical books and materials held by the library. As a distance student, you can use the interlibrary loan form to request items owned by the library. They will be shipped to you, and you will be responsible for returning them to the library.

The following video offers instruction on how to perform a basic search within the EBSCOhost interface. To find education resources you will use the EBSCO database Professional Development Education.

To log in from off campus, you will need to sign in with your DSU network account.

Pearl growing is a research technique that uses one relevant article as the basis for finding other relevant articles.

If you found only a few good articles on your topic, take a close  look at their references (citations). A single good article is much like a precious pearl. Its subject headings and sometimes the words in its title or abstract may give you ideas for making more and better searches.

Step One

The first thing you do is find one relevant article, using either a keyword search or a subject search in the database of your field.

Step Two

As you read the article you chose, highlight  new keywords, the names of frequently cited researchers, book titles, related theories, unique phrases, associations, assessments, and websites.

Use new keywords, unique phrases, assessments, and related theories as keyword searches in your database of choice. They may lead you to other articles of interest.

To find other articles written by frequently cited researchers, open the database of your field, go to the advanced search page, and type in the researcher's last name and first initial. Change the drop-down menu to "Author" and search. Your results will include articles written by that researcher.

To find books whose titles appear in your article, open the library catalog, type in the title of the book, change the drop-down menu to "Title" and search. If we have the book, write down the call number and check the book out. If we don't have the book, use ILL to borrow the book from another library.

Step Three

Return to your original article. Read the article again, highlighting pertinent passages that include in-text citations. Follow each highlighted citation to its partner in the reference list.

Use Journal Finder to find out if the library has a referenced article. You will need the title of the journal and the year the article was published in it. If we have the journal, there will be a link to the journal and you can search it for the article you need. If we don't have the journal, you can request an interlibrary loan.

To find books whose titles appeared in the reference list, open the library catalog, type in the title of the book, change the drop-down menu to "Title" and search. If we have the book, write down the call number and check the book out. If we don't have the book, use ILL to borrow the book from another library.

Your next step is to pearl grow another relevant article, and then another.... By the time you're done, you'll have a clear understanding of the literature surrounding your research problem.

What if you need an article, but you have found only a citation and abstract for it?

The full article may be available in one of our other research databases, so take the following steps: 

1.    Journal Finder.
Use the Library’s “Find a Journal” to discover if the journal you need is available in full in one of our other research databases.

• “Find a Journal” can be found in the center box on the library’s home page.
• Go to Find a Journal
• Enter the name of the journal you need in the Journal Finder search box.
• If the Library has access to the journal, the results will tell you the publication years available and will provide a link to the database where the journal can be accessed.  

2.   Google Scholar.
If the year/issue of the journal you need can’t be found in Journal Finder, you can go to Google Scholar and search for the specific article. 

• Sometimes you will be able to get the full article using this method, if it available from some location for free on the internet.
• You may increase the number of full text articles you can find in Google Scholar searches by setting preferences to include items for which the DSU Library is paying. For instructions, see "Finding full text DSU sources with Google Scholar" elsewhere on this page.

3.   Interlibrary Loan.
If neither of the two above steps gets you to the full article, request the Library to get the article for you through Interlibrary Loan.    Please note:

• The Library can’t guarantee a specific delivery time for articles requested through Interlibrary Loan, so it’s not an ideal solution if you know you need an article within a few days.
• For class assignments where you need an article quickly, and you could choose a different article, then it often makes sense to search for full text articles only in the Library's research databases.  Many of the research databases provide an option to limit the search to full articles -- either when you enter the search or on the results screen. When you have a very short turnaround time, this may be the only free and expedient solution for getting the material you need.
• For projects where you want to be sure you are selecting the best and latest articles, then you won’t want to limit yourself by searching for full text articles only.  In that case, it’s best to do research no less than 3 weeks before you want to read the material.  That gives time for interlibrary loan of most articles that can only be retrieved through interlibrary loan.  This is why we recommend never waiting until the last minute to do the research for major research projects, because doing so limits your ability to get the best material.