Don't overlook one of your best resources - your Gallucci-Cirio Librarians! Need help getting started, developing your search strategy, focusing your topic and selecting "keywords", deciding what type of resources you need as well as how to use them? The librarians are here to assist you whether you have a home work assignment or an indepth research project to complete.
Typing in a whole sentence for a search ususally doesn't get good results because the database is trying to match the whole thing - it's best to try to pull the main ideas out of what you are trying to search for - keywords.
All databases (including Google) use a keyword search to return results. (Library databases are also organized by Subject, but start with keywords.)
This online tool can help you create useful keywords from your topic sentence.
These one-page guides will also help you develop search keywords that will get results:
In addition to preventing plagiarism, citations serve another key role in the research process. They help to provide a longitudinal look at a research topic, providing connections to prior research that the author of an article (or other types of resources) used and to research that came after. Some databases such as Google Scholar and Criminal Justice Abstracts provide tools that can help you "explode" the article you are looking at to related articles. The tools are:
In the library's databases look for:
In Google Scholar look for: