Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at 5 Minutes to Better Research: Keyword Searching.
For any search, your first task will be to choose the words or terms that you'll use in your search. Keep in mind that the language you would use to describe what you're looking for may not be the language that the authors and editors use, so you will probably need to re-run your searches multiple times with different vocabulary in order to be sure that you've gotten the best and most relevant results.
Unless you specify that you want the search to look in the text of the materials in the catalog, you will see results that have your words and terms in the items' metadata (descriptive information about the material). A few more things to keep in mind:
When searching for additional terms to use, the metadata of resources you've already found is an excellent source. The catalog page -- the place you end up when you click on an item in a search results list -- will have subject terms listed, and often has an abstract that will contain the author's language.
Another place to find additional sources is in the bibliography of relevant items you've already found.
Quick Search is the default tab for the home page search box. Put in a few keywords, and it will run a broad search over about 70% of library resources. There are subscription databases it cannot search, but you will get a good general sense of the resources available.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Introduction to Quick Search WMS.
The Advanced Search interface allows you to search all the same material as in the Quick Search, with the additional ability to use multiple search fields and to apply filters before receiving results. This allows you to take advantage of the ease of Quick Search--no databases to decide on--while getting more specific results.
To look only for books, e-books, and other media (streaming video, DVDs, CDs, musical scores), use the Books & Media tab in the home page search box. You can specify a particular data field to search (Author, Title, Subject) or leave the drop-down menu on the default Keyword.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Finding and Requesting Physical Books and Accessing eBooks in the Pace Library.
Subject-specific databases may offer additional results that are not accessible via Quick or Advanced Search. These tools facilitate finding an appropriate database to look in.
Research Guides: In every subject's research guide, there will be a list of the best databases to search for articles on that subject.
Subject Menu in A-Z list: Both the Databases tab in the search box on the home page and the A-Z Databases page feature a drop-down menu that allows you to choose a subject; that will narrow the list of databases to the most appropriate for your subject. The A-Z Databases page additionally offers you the choice of limiting your list to a type or vendor -- for instance, images or EBSCO.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Picking a Database.
The search interfaces of the many subscription databases vary slightly from publisher to publisher, but there are basic commonalities between them, and between them and the Pace Quick Search/Advanced Search as well.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Database Search Techniques.
Once you have a result that you want to read or download, it may not be immediately apparent how to view the article.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Finding the Full Text of Articles.
Is there a particular item you need that doesn't appear in Pace's catalog? You can find it elsewhere and request it via Interlibrary Loan, or you can go directly to another New York library.
Prefer to learn by watching?
Go to our YouTube channel and take a look at Requesting an NYPL Circulating Book.