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Education: Find Sources

Search Tools for Education

Academic articles, sometimes also called journal articles or scholarly articles, are relatively short publications that academic researchers use to communicate new findings and ideas to other scholars. Articles are compiled in scholarly journals, which are essentially academic magazines that come out on a schedule. Many journal articles are peer-reviewed, which means they've gone through a formal review process before being published. 

When & Why to Use Articles:

  • You need information based on research and expertise.
  • You need detailed information that focuses on a narrow topic.
  • You need to find peer-reviewed material or ensure that the information you find is accurate.

Search for Articles on Education:

  • Education Collection (ProQuest)
    • Login Required
    Best Bet
    This collection provides access to ERIC, the leading index for education research, in combination with the full-text Education Database. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers and more, including full- text from hundreds of leading education journals.
  • ERIC
    • Login Required
    Best Bet
    This database indexes and abstracts approximately 1,000 educational and education-related journals from the CIJE (Current Index of Journals in Education) and documents from RIE (Resources in Education Index). Includes full-text from more than 2,200 Eric Digests.
  • SAGE Journals Online
    • Login Required
    Best Bet
    Full text journals in the areas of Business, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology and Medicine, often from volume 1, issue 1 to the present.
  • Children's Literature Comprehensive Database
    • Login Required
    Search this database for reviews, records and other related information about children’s literature. CLCD contains reviews supplied by over 38 review media. Search by subject, age level, genre and curriculum tools.
  • Education Week
    • Login Required
    Independent news publication covering K-12 education.
  • Ethnic NewsWatch
    • Login Required
    Database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Contains over 830,000 full-text articles from 240 publications. Covers 1990 to present.
  • Gale In Context: College
    • Login Required
    • Video
    Interdisciplinary content, chosen for college students, that reinforces the development of skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, and innovation.
  • JSTOR
    • E-Book
    • Login Required
    JSTOR includes archives of nearly three thousand academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles; the most recently published issues (past 3-5 years) are not available.
  • MasterFILE Premier
    • Login Required
    Full text for nearly 1,700 periodicals with full-text information dating as far back as 1975. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, MasterFILE Premier also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 592,000 photos, maps & flags.
  • Project Muse
    • Login Required
    Full-text access to over 30,000 eBooks and 600 journals in the humanities, arts, and social sciences from 100 scholarly publishers.
  • PsycARTICLES
    • Login Required
    Thousands of searchable full text articles from 57 peer reviewed journals published by the APA and allied organizations.
  • PsycINFO
    • Login Required
    Covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, and other areas. Includes more than 3.7 million records.
  • ScienceDirect Elsevier Science Journals
    • Login Required
    Online access to Elsevier journal subscriptions in the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.
  • Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest)
    • Login Required
    Provides access to databases covering international literature in social sciences, including politics, public policy, sociology, social work, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, library science, and education. Featured databases include International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Sociological Abstracts and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.
  • SocINDEX with Full Text
    • Login Required
    Sociology resource containing full text for 860 journals (dating back to 1908), over 800 books, and thousands of conference papers.
  • Teacher Reference Center
    • Login Required
    Indexing and abstracting over 280 peer-reviewed journals and magazines for professional educators.

Scholarly books are nonfiction books usually based on academic research done by the author or authors. They can contain multiple chapters on different aspects of a particular topic, or they can focus entirely on one concept or idea.

When & Why to Use Scholarly Books:

  • You need to understand a complex topic. Books are generally easier to read than journal articles.
  • You need very in-depth analysis of a topic.
  • You need a broad understanding of one or more topics.
  • You need a summary of existing research on a topic.

Search for Books and E-Books on Education:

Research Skills & Tips:

MC Library has access to streaming videos and audio, as well as DVDs and CDs. Different types of video and audio include documentaries, educational videos, mainstream movies, radio interviews, and podcasts. Additionally, users have access to a variety of images that can be used in their research.

When & Why to Use Videos or Media:

  • You need to include an expert's point of view, and a documentary or podcast on your topic includes an interview.
  • You're doing a presentation and need to include a visual or audio element.
  • You need to learn a concept that is best understood visually.

Search for Videos and Media on Education:

  • Gale In Context: College
    • Login Required
    • Video
    Interdisciplinary content, chosen for college students, that reinforces the development of skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, and innovation.

Search for Sources

The MC Library has access to different kinds of search tools: 

  • RaptorSearch searches across most of the information that you can access through the MC Library. Find books, e-books, streaming audio and video, and DVDs and CDs, as well as articles and other electronic resources from databases available through the library.
  • Databases are collections of articles, videos, images, or other types of sources. Some databases cover only one research area, like psychology or English. Other databases cover multiple research areas and are called multidisciplinary databases. Some databases are based on source type, like photographs or videos, instead of research area.

Use the tabs in the Search Tools box on this page to find suggested search tools to use for a variety of types of sources. 

MC students, faculty, and staff can access all of our search tools and online resources from on- or off-campus.

Research Skills & Tips:

Unlike Google, library databases can't understand an entire sentence. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important ideas: the keywords. Keywords are individual words or short phrases that represent the main ideas in your topic, thesis, or research question. 

Example Question: Is repeated reading or guided repeated oral reading an effective learning strategy in elementary school?

Keywords: repeated reading, elementary, learning strategy

After you've identified your main ideas and some keywords to start with, think of additional search terms for each concept. These can be synonyms, related ideas, broader terms, or narrower terms. Since a database will match only what you type, using different terms for similar ideas can help you find more articles. 

Example Search Terms: 

  • repeated reading: rereading, fluency, comprehension
  • elementary: elementary education, primary education, child development
  • learning strategy: teaching methods, active learning

Click on the research issue you're having below to see tips for addressing it:

I'm Not Finding Enough Sources

I'm Finding Too Many Sources

I'm Finding Irrelevant Sources

None of These Tips Solved My Research Issue


Not Finding Enough Sources

  • Type the word OR between related search terms to get results containing either term. Put the related search terms in parentheses.
    • Examples: ("repeated reading" or rereading) and elementary and "learning outcomes"; government and regulate and (internet or "social media")
    Diagram shows social media & internet highlighted
  • Use a truncation character (often the asterisk, *, but it can vary by search tool), which is a symbol added to the root of a word to tell the search tool that you want all forms of that word. 
    • Example: elect* will search for elect, election, elector, electoral, electorate, electing, etc.
  • Use a wildcard character (often the hash sign, #, but it can vary by search tool), which is a symbol that replaces any character in a word.
    • Example: wom#n will search for woman or women.

Finding Too Many Sources

  • Type the word AND between the main ideas in your search to get results containing all ideas.
    • Examples: "repeated reading" and elementary and "learning outcomes"; government and regulate and internet and "free speech"
    Diagram shows overlap between gov't & free speech

Finding Irrelevant Sources

  • Type the word NOT before a search term that you do not want your search results to contain.
    • Example: election not "united states"
    Diagram shows social media & internet highlighted
  • Type quotation marks around a specific phrase to get search results that contain only that exact phrase.
    • Example: "social media"
  • Use the search tool's filters to target search results that will meet your needs. You'll find filters on the search results screen. The exact location and filtering options varies by search tool.
    • Example: use a publication date filter to find sources published in the last five years.
    • Example: use a source type filter to find only articles or only videos.

If the options above did not help you find useful results, you may want to:

  • change your search terms,
  • select a different search tool,
  • make your topic broader or narrower, or
  • get research help from a librarian.

Research Skills & Tips:

After you've selected your search tool, identified keywords, and fixed research issues, it's time to choose your sources. It is common to get more search results than you will use, so you must evaluate the sources you find to choose the best ones for your research.

Start by scanning the search results to locate sources that fit your research question or need. The search results page will include information about each source, such as the title, year, and abstract, to help you determine its relevance.

Once you've found a source you'd like to use, evaluate its credibility by considering the evidence, source, context, audience, purpose, and execution of the source. Learn more on the Evaluate Information and Fake News guide linked below.


Research Skills & Tips:

Find Sources

"Find Sources." Magnifying Glass.

This page will help you choose where and how to search for your sources. As you search, use the tips on this page to help you evaluate each source you find.

Journals by Title

If you want to locate a particular journal, magazine, or newspaper, instead of an individual article, use the Journals by Title feature in RaptorSearch. Search by publication title, such as Newsweek or Psychological Bulletin, or get a list of all journals on your topic by browsing through the journal categories.