Criminology and Deviance

To get some contextual background information on your topic, add:

AND (encyclopedia OR handbook)

to your basic search in Discover, then limit to books. This will give you resources that will help you formulate your specific topic and get some background knowledge.

Click here for an example search.

The below lists of resources will help you get started on a particular topic.

Article databases contain information about articles, and often include the full-text of the articles as well.

While searching our discovery service will find articles for you, databases allow you do more controlled and precise searching.

General:

Interlibrary Loans

If you come across a book or article that you would like to use for your assignment, but the library doesn't have it, never fear! Fill out an interlibrary loan form and we will find the resource from another library and send it to you. Find the form under Interlibrary Loans on the page "Online Forms" below.

Boolean Searching

1. Use AND to combine words when you want to find articles that have both words.

Example: tea AND coffee

2. Use OR to combine words when you want to find articles that have either of the words (not necessarily both, but one or the other).

Example: coffee OR cappuccino

• Tip: combine synonyms with OR to broaden your search and make sure that you find enough research!

3. You can combine both AND and OR to create a good advanced search strategy, either by using parentheses or multiple search bars.

Example: tea AND (coffee OR cappuccino)

Phrase Searching

Put quotation marks around phrases in the search bar to ensure that the words are searched as a phrase, not individually.

Example: "social media"

Example: "early childhood education"

Truncation

Put an asterisk ( * ) at the end of words to fill in different word endings.

Example: Canad* will find: Canadian, Canadians, Canada, Canadas

Example: achieve* will find achieves, achieve, achievement, achievements

Caution: you may end up finding words that you didn't want!

Example: Chin* will find China and Chinese, but it will also find chin, chins, and chinstrap (penguins!).