Academic Search Complete is a general purpose database that provides articles from a wide range of subject areas, and is part of the EBSCOhost collection of databases. All EBSCOhost databases use the same interface (if you were wondering why many of the databases look the same, it is because they are all part of the same EBSCOhost "family.")
On the library’s main page, go to the “Find Articles” tab. Type your search terms in the search box and click Find.
If you go directly to Academic Search Complete, you have more options to limit or expand your search. In the search field, type in your search terms and click "Search." You can also choose to limit your search results to full text, scholarly journals, or by document type or language.
To view the full text of the article, click on PDF Full Text, or Full Text Finder.
Full Text Finder will direct you to a list of databases that have the article.
A Boolean search allows you to use keywords such as AND, OR, and NOT to produce more relevant search results.
AND- each result will contain all of the search terms.
OR- each result will contain at least one search term.
NOT- the results will not contain the second term.
Expanding Your Search
By checking the "Apply related words" box, you can expand the results to include synonyms and other similar words. For example, a search for children's literature would also search for child, youth, young adult, adolescent, teenager, etc.
If you click on the blue folder to the right of the article title, it will save the article to your own personal folder, but only during the current search session. This can be helpful because it enables you to bookmark potentially useful articles without having to interrupt your search to stop and spend time reading each individual article before moving on.