9.  oneSEARCH is the primary search tool to look for books and articles in the Library’s collections.

Go to the big search box on the Library’s website. This is oneSEARCH. It searches print books, e-books, e-book chapters and many (but not all) of our article databases at the same.

     

 

If you're doing research on a particular short story, you can just start with the story title as a search and see what comes up.

 

"sonny's blues"

"where are you going where have you been"

Sometimes browsing the results will give you ideas for additional themes, terms, and searches. While oneSEARCH understands natural language searches, it is still a good idea to set up your searches in terms of keywords, and linking them together using AND. So if you're doing research on the history of jazz music, then a possible search could be: 
 

    "jazz music" AND history

 

Here are some additional sample searches based on the interests and themes that are being expressed in class:

     "mental health" AND (literature OR fiction OR novel)

     music AND "black culture"

     music AND "african americans"

     "cultural differences" AND families

     apathy AND "bartleby the scrivener"

      (apathy OR silence OR refusal) AND "bartleby the scrivener"

     "mental health" AND "bartleby the scrivener"

     (gender OR women) AND (literature OR novel OR fiction)

      girl AND "jamaica kincaid" AND gender

     (mental OR physical) AND imprisonment AND "sonny's blues"

      stereotypes AND women AND (literature OR fiction)

 

Sample results from oneSEARCH. Note that these all come up in a search for sources about "Bartleby the Scrivener," but each source addresses a different aspect or theme of the story (of which there are many). Browsing through the sources can be helpful - you might be drawn to some sources and not to others - as well as giving you ideas for additional terms or themes to use in your searching.
 

The first three results are ebooks, and the remaining four results are articles in scholarly (peer reviewed) journals. Note the PEER REVIEWED tag beneath the citation. Click on the “Available Online” link to access to the full-text of the source.

To limit your search to ONLY peer reviewed articles in OneSEARCH, click on the “Peer Reviewed Journals” filter on the left-hand side of your search results. To limit your search to ONLY online sources (not print), click on the “Full Text Online” filter.

 

 

Now that you’ve found some sources using oneSEARCH, let’s go into some article databases. The Brooklyn College Library subscribes to over 400 different article databases and although oneSEARCH searches a lot of them at the same time, it doesn’t search all of them.