A good way to be sure what you see in your search results is relevant to what you need is to use a subject-focused database. Once you become familiar with the names of the library subject databases that are best for your topic research, you can go straight to the library's alphabetical list of databases and choose the ones you know you need, or use a library research guide to direct you to the best databases for your topic. Select from one of these subject databases when doing research in Puerto Rican and Latino Studies. This guide below will show you tips for choosing and searching in library subject databases.
You may have used OneSearch to do your research and gotten back many results. Perhaps you got back too many results, way more results than you can use or even can look through in any reasonable amount of time. Sometimes using OneSearch feels just like you are searching in Google. You can get hundreds of thousands or millions of results and you never get past the first few. It is like trying to see your way through a snowstorm.
Sometimes when searching for information in OneSearch, a lot of what you see listed does not even seem related to your topic. Try a search in OneSearch looking for bugs and you may find mixed in your results articles and books on computer software engineering, a prohibition-era gangster, poetry, and yes, of course, insects. A lot to sift through to get to the bugs you want!
EBSCOhost provides the Brooklyn College Library with many of its databases. The search screens on most EBSCO databases look similar and work the same way. The tutorial below demonstrates searching in EBSCO Academic Search Complete, a multi-subject database. You can use the same search techniques demonstrated here when searching in other EBSCO databases and databases by other providers.
