Maine Ecology

Search Strategies

While you may get lucky and find an article that exactly meets your search criteria, more likely than not, you'll have to read many articles, pull relevant information along the way, and apply your new knowledge to draw conclusions. These tips will help you stay on track:

Search a variety of sources

The sources below come from a variety of companies and pull from different resources. Search widely throughout this set to get the most relevant information for your topic.

Start broad and get more specific

While adding keywords to a search might seem like the best way to get the information you need, it can often limit your results and prevent you from seeing all that's available. So, start broad with one search term and adjust from there.

Vary keywords and search term combinations

It's important to search multiple keywords, synonyms, and related terms to find the most information possible. For example, you might search bladder wrack and then seaweed in a second search as a related term.

Look for information you can apply, not the perfect article

While you can certainly search for the perfect article, your research will also require you to read widely, gather information about many topics, and apply that new knowledge to your assignment.

Digital Libraries

Digital libraries are digitized collections of published materials. They are an excellent resource because they include information from a variety of sources, such as peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, and magazines. While you always need to check your source for bias, relevance, and currency, digital libraries offer quick and easy access to reliable sources (and they provide ready-made citations, too!).

While these resources are accessed through the internet, please remember that they are not available on the open web.

Environment Complete (EBSCO)

Extensive coverage in the areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, and affiliated areas of study. Offering full text and indexing for journals, books and monographs.

GreenFILE (EBSCO)

A free research database that provides scholarly, government and general-interest sources covering the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and governments and what can be done at each level to minimize negative impacts.

In Context: Environmental Studies (GALE)

From climate change to automobile emissions, today’s environmental issues determine the destiny of tomorrow’s world. Gale In Context: Environmental Studies provides users with comprehensive information, empowering learners to critically analyze and understand important topics that affect people around the world. Explore topics and events within Earth systems, global change, pollution, populations, and more.

Integrating case studies, news, reference materials, academic journals, videos, and more, Environmental Studies is updated daily with relevant information. The resource offers nearly 400 topic, state, and province pages across the science, social studies, and humanities curriculum, including Water Privatization, Ecotourism, Air Pollution, Green Economy, and more.

OneFile: Environmental Studies & Policy (GALE)

The Gale OneFile: Environmental Studies & Policy is a digital resource that answers inquiries about environmental concerns with coverage of more than 5.4 million articles from more than 300 journals and book reference content from Delmar, including Soil, Science, and Management; Introduction to Agronomy; Food, Crops, & Environment; Fundamental Soil Science; and more.

Exclusive features, including Topic Finder, InterLink, and a mobile-optimized interface, support and enhance the search experience.

Open Web

The open web is a great resource to find almost anything, but remember that when doing research, you must be sure the information you've found is accurate and reliable. Tools like Google Advanced Search and Google Scholar let you control your results better than a general search.

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