To find articles on your topic in the Education Abstracts database, you will first need to get into the database from the library's homepage. If you are enrolled as an off-campus student, you may wish to make use of some special services that the Library offers, including Document Delivery and remote access to our databases. See Distance Education Library Services for additional information.
To reach Education Abstracts, there are several paths you can follow, the most common of which is,
www.ferris.edu > FLITE Library > Databases > Education and Career Related Resources > Education Abstracts
Once you have opened the database, notice the right side boxes- it automatically starts you off in a keyword search, so you can use search terms such as "autism" or "learning disabilities".
For our first search....note that "Autism" brings up 2,082 periodical (magazine and journal) articles. Because this is far too many- I would suggest narrowing the search by using a subject search for "Autism" rather than a keyword search. What this means is that all the results you get from a subject search are on the topic of autism, rather than simply mentioning the word.
This brings up 340 articles, which is really still too many. I like to try and narrow my search even more by choosing among the selections at the bottom of the main search window. If you want to narrow your search even further, such as only asking for articles published in the last three years, you can limit with dates, as in the example below...
In fact, if you want only refereed or scholarly journals (What is this?), you can limit in Education Abstracts to weed out those items not considered scholarly. To do this you need to type"peer-reviewed journal" into an empty search box and select the index "Reviewed Journal Phrase".
Some of the entries in Education Abstracts are in full text format but most are not. If you only get a citation for an article you are interested in and you need to get a copy of the article, the
button will give you the range of options available for document retrieval. Be aware that this link does not work well linking to InfoTrac articles, and with WilsonSelect PLUS articles.
If the only message you see is "Request document via Interlibrary Loan", you will need to order the article. By clicking on the link in the window provided, you will be directed to a blank Interlibrary Loan form to be filled out. Sometimes the Find It button will provide a link to the Online Catalog. This indicates that the journal is found in FLITE's print collection. If you are off-campus and can't come to FLITE, simply order the article through our Interlibrary Loan Department.To look up whether FLITE owns a particular journal title, use Find a Periodical to search for the journal title.
Remember to use the journal title not the article title for your search.In addition, librarians are available at the South Service Desk to help you find information to complete your course assignments and reports. If you would like to contact Kristy Motz personally, please call (231)591-3625, or contact me via email: Ask Kristy Motz.
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Last Update: November 28, 2006