COMM 3580: Health Campaigns: Business Resources

Business Research: Starting, Brainstorming & Idea Gathering

Rule 1: Pick something that interests you

Rule 2: Help (in-person, chat, email) is available at the Marriott Library

The Wall Street Journal is available online through Factiva:

The past month of The Wall Street Journal is available in print in Periodicals on Level 2 of the Marriott Library.

Harvard Business Review is in full-text from 1922 through Online Journals and Business Source Premier:

The past month is available in Periodicals on Level 2 of the Marriott Library.

Forbes covers business, investing, technology and leadership.  Forbes is available in print on Level 2 of the Marriott Library in periodicals & online through Online Journals and Business Source Premier (see link above).

Three Great Starting Points for Business Research: Industry, Market & Company

Other Useful Business Research Tools Provided by the Marriott Library:

More useful business databases:

All of these resources are available at the Marriott Library.  If you have questions or need help:

• Email the Business Team at the Marriott Library.
• If all else fails, use the library chat box on this guide, or the "Ask the Library" box at lib.utah.edu to chat or email the library.

  ---

Tips:
Locate databases at lib.utah.edu, by clicking on the "Research Databases" tab, and sorting by letter or subject.
Locate "Online Journals" under "Quick Links" at lib.utah.edu and sort by first letter of your journal.

Phrase Searching

Phrase searching is using quotations.

For instance:

"international olympic committee"
"Utah tennis"

It finds the exact phrase, and items with words in the order typed.  One exception is Scopus.  Scopus uses curly brackets or braces for {exact phrase} searching.  In Scopus, quotes are used for "loose/approximate phrase" searching.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators are simple words (AND, OR and NOT) used as conjunctions to combine or exclude keywords in a search, resulting in more focused search results.

OR

• Broadens or expands your search
• Is used to retrieve like terms or synonyms
• Finds all items with either teenager OR adolescent
• In set theory and math, "union" is inclusive "OR".
  "OR" = teenager U adolescent

AND

• Narrows or limits your search
• Used to retrieve unrelated terms
• Finds items with both diet and children
• In set theory and math, "intersection" is "AND".
  "AND" = diet ∩ children

NOT

• Narrows or limits your search
• Finds the term "spider" not "monkey"
• Use the NOT operator with caution
• May eliminate relevant records

Note:
AND is the default or implied operator in Usearch, Google, Scopus, PubMed, EBSCOhost, and most search interfaces. 
"ecotourism sustainable" is the same as "ecotourism AND sustainable"

In Usearch, EBSCOhost, SCOPUS, and PubMed, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) must be entered in upper case.

Truncation Stemming

Truncation or stemming is using an asterisk *.  It is also known as a wildcard.  Truncation is a symbol that retrieves all the suffixes or endings of a word.

For instance:

school*             retrieves school, schools, schooling, schooled, etc.
latin*                 retrieves latina, latino, latinx, latinos, latinas, latin, latinization, etc.

Note:
In the Library of Congress, % (percent sign) is a single character wildcard and ? (question mark) is truncation for multiple characters.

Nesting

Nesting is commonly used when combining more than one Boolean operator (OR, AND).  Most search interfaces search left to right.  Using parentheses in a search changes the order of operation.

For instance:

(moral* OR ethic*) AND (assisted suicide OR euthanasia)

(ski OR skis OR skiing OR snowboard*) AND video*

Proximity or Adjacency Operators

Proximity operators allow you to find one word within a certain distance of another.

With (w), Near (n), Next (n), or Pre (p) are common proximity operators.

Note:
Read the database help to see if proximity operators can be used in your searches.

Thanks to Alfred Mowdood for authoring these instructions.