CSEM 370: AgroEcology: Sustainable Agricultural Systems: Home

Request items from around the world through Interlibrary Loan. Check and request books from I-Share first before requesting books through this service. 

You may also want to watch this video, What is a Scholarly Journal Article? (University of Washington Libraries).

There are print copies of the MLA Style guide at the Information Desk on the first floor of Morris Library. You may use them in the library.

• Break your topic into the main concepts and use connectors (and, or) for your search:
   

  What is the role of precision agriculture in creating sustainable agroecosystems of the future? --> Precision agriculture and sustainability and ecosystems

• Use the database's limit to peer-reviewed journals if this option is available.
   
• Peer-reviewed journal limiters may also be called Academic Journals (e.g., in CAB) or scholarly journals.
   
• Web of Science databases do not have a specific limiter for peer-reviewed articles, but almost all of the journals indexed are peer-reviewed. You may limit to articles and not conference papers, etc.
   
• See this YouTube video if you want to learn about visual clues to distinguish scholarly articles vs. magazine articles.
   
• You may also want to see the chart created by Jennifer Horton or the handout that shows the different parts of a scholarly article or magazine article.
   
• Use synonyms to expand your search and connect them with or:
   

  no till or no tillage or conservation tillage

• Link from subjects or descriptors found in article citations to find others.
   
• Use limits, such as language, publication date, and publication/document  type (e.g., scholarly journals or peer-reviewed journals, review articles).
   
• Combine searches in Search History.
   
• Databases produced by the same vendor (for example, CAB, Agricola, and Environment Index are in EBSCO) may be searched together. The OneSearch box also combines many databases but not the Web of Science Databases.  Web of Science All Databases search combines Biological Abstracts, Zoological Record, and the Core Collection databases.
   
• Use truncation symbols if available, e.g. pollin* will find pollin, pollinator, pollinators, pollinating, etc.
   
• Limit to words in the title or abstract to narrow your search
   
• Use "Cited by" or "Related articles" links if available to find more articles

Books and chapters in books can give you an overview on a particular topic.

Search books, journals, government documents, videos, DVDs, etc. by using the Morris Library Catalog.

You may limit your search to just SIUC, or if you have a week to ten days, search All I-Share and request that materials be sent to the library.