Answered By: Ken Fujiuchi
Last Updated: Jul 26, 2021     Views: 219

To start, go to our library home page:

https://library.buffalostate.edu/home

You will find a search box called "AllSearch" on our front page. Enter the keywords associated with your topic of research. Once you enter your keywords, click the search button, and it should take you to the search results page.

Before you continue, I recommend you sign in with your Buffalo State username and password (you should see an option to sign in) so that you can save your search results as you go. By logging in, it will let you keep your saved articles, with links to full-text, permanently in your account. You will always be able to get back to them when you come back. 

On your search results, you should see Refine Your Search options to narrow down your search results. I would recommend starting with Availability - Peer-reviewed, and Content-Type - Article. I also recommend changing the Publication Date to the past 5-10 years (set the starting and ending years). Before you look at your results, I recommend expanding the Subject options to see what the topic is in your current search results. This will show you the most common subjects that are appearing in your search, and lets you quickly narrow down your topic. It may also give you some ideas for new keywords to try.

As you find articles, you can save them by clicking on the pins icon that appears with each search result. If you click the title of an article, it will expand with more details, along with links to full-text to our subscriptions. The first time you try to open a full-text link, it should ask you to log in with your Buffalo State Account. Sometimes there may be one more click to get to the PDF or full-text of the article.