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CE 101: Journal articles

Civil Engineering 101 Course Guide

OneSearch

OneSearch: Everything

OneSearch is a discovery tool that allows you to search most everything the CSULB Library owns or has access to through one simple search box to retrieve credible, authoritative, and suitable articles (and books and media). It solves the problem of not knowing where to start.

Keep in mind though, OneSearch searches most but not ALL library databases (for instance it does not search Compendex).

In addition use the databases below for your project

Databases (to find journal articles)

Databases follow some basic principles:  
Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are used to combine terms in the following ways with parentheses to group the terms: 

AND    Both words must be present
OR      Either or both words must be present
NOT    The first but not the second word must be present

  • Use quotation marks to search as a phrase, in the exact order you type them, example “rapid prototyping”. 
  • Use an asterisk to search for multiple versions of a word at once by truncating the terms. For example, typing comput* will allow you to search for compute, computer, computers or computing.
  • Use Limits, i.e., date range, document type..
  • Search fields, i.e., author, title, abstract, etc.

All database allow you to email or print results (in different citation formats), save records, provide search history, show related topics/articles.  Many provide "cited by" references. Most of our databases allow for citations to be downloaded to Endnote.

 

Getting the Full Text of an Article

One of the following buttons appears in almost all of the Library's research databases (e.g. Academic Search Complete, Compendex, ABI Inform etc.):

The menu will tell you whether we have it full-text online, in print or you have to request it via BeachReach.

If you have a citation to an article (but are not in a database),  the simplest way to find out if we have the article online or in print is to search by journal title in COAST (the online catalog).

  

Not Available at CSULB?

Is your article not available at CSULB?

Put in a request through CSU+ straight from OneSearch to get full-text of any article. 

You can request an item directly if you can't find it in OneSearch.

Need more information? Visit Borrow From Another Library, our interlibrary services page.

FAQs