Grant Writing (01:355:315)

QuickSearch searches across many library resources. It searches many, but not all of our article databases, searches for e-books and print books, and for other items in our physical collections, such as DVDs. It searches so broadly that you often get a very large, even overwhelming search result. One way to make your search result more manageable is to use the limits on the left: click Resource Type, then Articles.

Probably the most useful use of QuickSearch is to find a specific article (or book, etc.) Simply type the first four or five words of the title, in double quotes, and click the search icon. The record for the item you want should appear at or very near the top of your search results.

See the Search Tips box below on advanced search an article database, on using and, or, a wildcard, etc. The default search in QuickSearch is a basic search, all of the your search terms in one search box. Here you have to capitalize AND and OR, and search terms with OR using parentheses:
child* AND ("food insecurity" OR "food security")
Check out your search options in Advanced Search in QuickSearch as well.

Databases that might be useful in writing your proposal include: Applied Social Sciences Index,  ERIC, PAIS, Social Service Abstracts, Social Science Premium Collection, and Academic Search Premiere. (Academic Search Premiere is an EBSCO database; none of the EBSCO databases are searched in QuickSearch.)

To see a full list, from the New Brunswick Libraries homepage, under Find & Use Library Materials, click on Search a subject-specific database. You can list databases by subject, for example the education databases or the environment databases, using the subject filter at the top of the page. Select a subject, then click Apply,

Most databases default to Advanced Search. Type the term or terms you want to search in the search boxes on the right. Select where you want to search in the drop-down menu on the left. Most databases default to searching the records of articles, plus the full text, if available. But you can choose in the drop-down to search just in the records of the articles (often a better option, a more focused search) or just in parts, "fields" of the article records, the title field, for example, the subject field.

The basics of constructing your advanced search:
- Use "double quotes" to search for a phrase: "food insecurity"
- * is a wildcard, will search forms of a term: africa* also searches african, africans, etc.
The boxes in advanced search are connected with AND by default. The more boxes, the more ANDs you use, the more specific your search. All of the search terms have to appear together in, for example, the record of an article:
- "food insecurity" and africa* will produce fewer search results, find fewer articles then searching just africa*
Within a search box, searching terms with OR has the opposite effect. It broadens your search, because any of the terms can appear:
- "food insecurity" or "food security" will produce more search results than just "food insecurity"