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Using EBSCO Academic Search Premier

EBSCO's Academic Search Premier database is one of the partial full text databases that GALILEO offers.

1. Before you start searching, look carefully at your topic. It should be well-focused, and usually composed of two concepts, for example: baseball players AND salaries for baseball players' salaries. Searches with two concepts generally yield better results than searches with three. The AND is an operator that pulls two concepts together like two overlapping circles. It does not have to be capitalized.
2. Bring up the GALILEO. Academic Search Premier (at EBSCOhost) is the top selection on the light amber square below the globe on the left side of the screen.
3. Type in your search. Remember step 1. A properly focused topic usually contains more than one concept and an AND. Then click on the search button.
4. You receive a list of references in groups of ten. Click on the blue titles to open up the full citation with abstract.
5. For full text articles, click on the blue text to the right of the full text icon to retrieve the article text.
6. Click on the blue text next to the PDF full text icon for the "full image" of the article. This retrieves the scanned image of the article. Remember this is extremely slow.
7. To print an article, while the article is still on the screen, click the print icon. On the next page click the print button to confirm. This ensures that the whole article inside the frame gets printed. Click on back to return to the article text.
8. An arrow pointing right sends you to the next article (when viewing an article) or the next group (when viewing results list). An arrow pointing left sends you to the previous article or previous groups. Article citations are displayed in batches of ten.
9. Headings for subjects are long and detailed. Moreover, EBSCO searches them left to right so they must be exact word matches. As a result, key word searching is more useful and flexible.
10. There is an expert search but unless you have a specific author or journal/magazine in mind, it is not particularly useful.

EHK - November 2004