• Library Discovery page - this will search across everything that the library has.
  • it is an easy place to start
  • you can restrict to certain types of material, date ranges etc
  • but it can bring in large amounts on irrelevant literature from other disciplines
• Databases.
  • these are collections of material on specific disciplines, though there are also multidisciplinary databases.
  • access them at the Library Databases page.
    • search by keyword or subject to find relevant databases for you.
  • some assessments require you to do a database search - check your assessment details
  • discipline databases give you more focussed results than general library or web searching
• Google Scholar
  • restricted to primarily academic literature
  • easy to access and use
  • no quality control on content - may not be peer-reviewed
  • add VU in library links (in Settings menu) to enable access to VU subscribed content

Eg the research question 'how effective is cognitive behavioural therapy treatment for school refusal'.

• There are two concepts: school refusal and cognitive behavioural therapy
• a list of terms could be:

A structured search approach would consider it like this:

In the database we would enter:

• Line 1    school refusal OR school avoidance OR school phobia
• Line 2    cognitive behavioural therapy OR CBT OR behavioural intervention
• Line 3     L1 AND L2 

TRUNCATION and WILDCARD operators (see How to search #2 above) would deliver more results by finding word and spelling variations:

• Line 1    school refusal OR school avoidance OR school phobia
• Line 2    cognitive behavio* therapy OR CBT OR behavio?ral intervention*
• Line 3     L1 AND L2 

The search could then be developed with more concepts:

• Line 1    school refusal OR school avoidance OR school phobia
• Line 2    cognitive behavio* therapy OR CBT OR behavio?ral intervention*
• Line 3     L1 AND L2 
• Line 4     L3 AND Australia*   (to find Australian literature in our results)

or

• Line 4     L3 AND qualitative    (to find qualitative literature)