Honors College Forum: Researching Your Social Impact Plan

QuickSearch is a tool to search across a wide range of Rutgers Libraries resources. It searches many, many, but not all, of the Libraries article databases, reference titles, data sources, etc. It also searches what used to be the Libraries catalog: books and e-books, videos and streaming video, maps, music, etc.

The basic search, the search box on the Libraries homepage, is pretty simple to use but basic. If you'd prefer more search options, want to search with more precision, see the Advanced Search box below.

QuickSearch searches across such a wide array of resources that you often get a very large search result. If you find your search result a bit overwhelming, check out Refining your search below.

In a basic search, you type your search into a single search box:
- Quotes to search a phrase: "food insecurity"
- Use the wildcard, an asterisk, to search for forms of a word: child* searches child, child's, children, children's, etc.
- Combine terms with AND, OR (in caps)
-- AND makes your search more focused: "food insecurity" AND child* is more specific than "food insecurity"
-- OR broadens your search: "food insecurity" OR "food security" will retrieve more sources than just "food insecurity". If you use AND, OR in the same search statement, place the ORed terms in parentheses, so that QuickSearch searches those terms together, as a separate element in your search statement.

So you could search this in QuickSearch:
("food insecurity" OR "food security") AND child*
However, you'll get a very  large search result. See the box below, Refining your search, for tips on focusing your search result.

Basic Search searches across the full text of articles, e-books and other sources. Sometimes it's helpful to search so broadly, especially if you're searching for something very specific. Other times you might want to use Advanced Search to search in a more focused manner. Advanced Search allows you to search for terms in a specific "field" (for an author, in a title, for subject), to search specific types of sources, sources published during a certain period of time, etc.

Click here to see an example: books published since 2020 that have the phrase "food insecurity" OR "food security" in the title. (If you use OR to combine terms in QuickSearch, remember to type OR in caps.)

For an author's name, search, in quotes: "last name, first name".

Searching by subject in Advanced Search can sometimes be problematic. QuickSearch searches across dozens of databases. And different databases might use different subject headings for your topic.

QuickSearch arranges your search results in relevance order. That is, it places what it thinks are the most important, the most relevant sources at or near the top of the list of results. You can always click on Relevance and sort the search results, for example, in reverse chronological order, newest articles first.

Ways to refine your results:
- After you've tried some searches in QuickSearch and perhaps some article databases, you may find that your initial topic, your initial research question, is too broad to address in your paper for this class. Food insecurity and children, for instance, is very broad. Consider focusing a broad topic by searching an additional term or terms. For example, if you started with Basic Search, you could add: AND africa*. Or add africa in the subject field to your Advanced Search.
- Like most article databases, QuickSearch has a list of filters to the left of your search results. You can refine, for example, by Creation Date, Resource Type, limit to articles in peer-reviewed journals, etc.
- Check out the sources cited in an source's bibliography. For example, if you find a highly relevant book in a search result, you don't necessarily have to read the entire book, but you should check out its bibliography, see if it cites highly relevant articles. Copy the title of a relevant article and search it, in quotes, in Basic Search. It should appear at the top of you QuickSearch results.
- If you started searching in Basic Search, you could try some searches in Advanced Search. See the box above.

Articles:
By default, all the articles in a QuickSearch search result are available in full text. Just click View online. The default tends to limit the number of older articles your search retrieves. For some topics, some research questions, it may may provide a less useful search result.

You can click, above the filters to the left of your search result, Expand My Search.  This will add articles that are only available in print. It may expand the search result significantly. For the article records that say No Online Access, just click the title to go to the full record, then Sign In. Once you've signed in with your NetID (and created an Delivery Account, if you don't have one), you can click Article Delivery, and we'll provide a PDF copy, usually within twenty-four hours.

Books:
For print books, those with a brief record that does not have a View Online link, you can simply go to stacks, the book shelves of the library that holds the book, and check it out at the circulation desk. (Click here for a brief tutorial on how to use the book's call number to locate it in the stacks.) Or you can click the title to go to the full record, then click Sign In, and sign in with your NetID (and create a Delivery Account if you don't have one). You will then have the option to request a PDF copy of a chapter or request to pick up the print  book at the circulation desk of the Rutgers library of your choice.

If you have any questions about accessing, in print or online, sources you've found in QuickSearch or a database, see my contact information under the Citing Your Sources tab.

To save the record of just one source, in the upper right of the brief record, click the email icon or click the ellipsis (...), then Permalink.

To save a batch of records, in your results list, check off the box  to the left of the records you want to save, then click the ellipsis (...) at the top right of the page. Then click the email icon.

Or click the thumbtack icon in the upper right of the brief record of a source you want to save. This will add it to a Favorites list. Then click the thumbtack icon in the upper right of the screen to go to the list you've created. Check off the box next to the sources you want to save in the list, then click the ellipsis (...) at the top of the page. Then click the email icon.

For more and better options, check out the Citing your Sources tab. A citation manager, for example, will let you save all of your research in one place and, among other things, will create your citations and build your bibliography as you type your paper.