Research Guides: Education *: Finding Research Materials

3 things to remember!

When using article databases, remember there are always three stages in your workflow:

1) Discovery: Do (and redo!) your searching, using varying terms and combining using the Boolean operators "and, or, not" to get good results. Your first search is not your best search, but rather an opportunity to learn how to immediately do a better search.

2) Delivery: For items that you like, select the link to the full-text if available, or click on the button to see if we own the item. If you want to keep this item, either save it to your own computer, email it to yourself, or print it.

3) Organize it: Keep the "meta-information" about all the resources you found for your records and to make your bibliographies. You will find yourself returning to resources so having a system in place will save you time and aggravation later. USC Libraries has a subscription to the citation manager, RefWorks, that will help you organize the information you're collecting. For more information on other citation managers, check out this page.

Source

Content in this guide has been adapted with permission from Scott Collard's NYU Libraries Education guide.

Article databases

The article databases listed below allow you to search for articles through multiple journals simultaneously. Click on the name of the database below to start searching. If you're off-campus, you'll be asked to log-in using your USC ID and password. For a list of all USC Libraries subscription databases, go to A-Z Database List.

America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Excellent coverage of history of American education.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Abstracting and indexing database with more than 3 million records devoted to peer-reviewed literature of journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations and reports in psychology, the behavioral sciences, and mental health.
Educational Administration Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing and abstracting for articles in more than 100 journals related to the administration of primary, secondary and post-secondary educational facilities and programs.

Subjects covered include: personnel, curriculum, school-community relations, supervision, minority group relations, and professional education. Educational levels include: early childhood education, K-12, community colleges, and higher education.
Coverage: 2003 to present
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text for education journals, and encompasses an international array of English-language periodicals, monographs, yearbooks and more. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education—from early childhood to higher education—as well as all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education and testing.

Content Includes:Full text for more than 1,900 journals; Indexing and abstracts for more than 3,500 journals; Full text for more than 550 books and monographs; Full text for numerous education-related conference papers; and citations for more than 5.5 million articles, including book reviews.
ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Key database for education research and education literature. Database includes journal articles, conference proceedings, government documents and dissertations on topics about and related to education. Maintained by the Dept of Education.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is multidisciplinary and enables you to search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed articles, books and theses. To set USC as your school, click on Scholar Preferences. Next enter USC into the search box, and click Find Library. Select University of Southern California, then click Save Preferences.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
Good resource for policy issues related to education. International in scope, with coverage of journal resources as well as "gray literature" like government information.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day and offering full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Large abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature in science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Includes bibliometrics tools to track, analyze and visualize research.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary database that provides citations covering high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international conference proceedings.
Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides.

Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

Finding books

Find a book by title

1. Go to the home page of the library: libraries.usc.edu

2. Click on Refine Your Search link underneath the white search box (this will bring up a menu).

3. Select Books.

4. Input title of the book and click search (magnifying glass).

5. If we have the book in library's collection, you'll see a link on the results list.

Find a book by topic

1. Go to the home page of the library: libraries.usc.edu

2. Click on Refine Your Search link underneath the white search box (this will bring up a menu).

3. Select E-Books.

4. Type in terms to describe the topic (Example: "common core standards")

Tip: Use quotation marks for phrases.

4. Click Search (magnifying glass).

If the library does not have the book you need, you can request it through interlibrary loan or recommend we add it to the library's collection.