Contact the Business Librarian
Using Boolean Operators
Booleans: AND, OR, NOT
- AND combines two search words together. Both must appear in your article, narrowing your results.
- OR allows you to search for synonyms or like terms. Only one of the terms must appear in your article, broadening your results.
- NOT removes a specific term from your results.
Quotation marks
- Phrases stick together as one keyphrase. "climate change"; "blue whale"; "Cretaceous period"
Asterisks
- Add to the end of a root word to find all words that include all words that include that root term. volcan* - volcano, volcanic, volcanology, volcanism
Scholarly Research in SURF
The Salisbury University Resource Finder (SURF) is a federated search; this means it will search across many library sources from one search box. You can use SURF to search for books (both physical books located in the library and eBooks), newspaper and magazine articles, books your professor has left on course reserves, scholarly articles, academic journals, and databases.
You can find many scholarly articles using the SURF. When you use the SURF search box, your search results will include a menu on the left side with a variety of facets that will refine your results by limiting your search to certain perimeters. For example, if you want to limit your search to only articles that are peer reviewed, you will want to use the facet "Peer-reviewed Journals" facet under "Availability."
If you don't limit the search to only peer reviewed articles, SURF will still let you know if an article is peer reviewed via the purple peer review icon.
Searching Databases
Not every option will be found in SURF some databases, such as Statista, are not indexed and there are also times when a database search may make more sense for your research needs. If you want to find more focused results within a certain discipline of study, searching individual databases can be really useful.
From the Database A-Z List you can search databases by subject, vendor, or title/keyword.
By searching by subject you can find databases in a variety of business disciplines including, accounting, business, information systems, and management.
When looking at records within database you will see a few ways by which you can access the article immediately:
- HTML Full Text
- PDF Full Text (or a similar Get PDF option)
- View at Publisher
When those options are not available, you may see the yellow Find It button 
The find it button will check other SU databases for the article or take you to an option to request the article via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL requests are pretty fast, so I wouldn't recommend skipping this option if the article looks relevant to your needs!
Suggested Databases
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowBusiness Source Complete is an essential tool for business students. It covers all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance and more. Content includes many full-text journals and topical video content.
- HeinOnline Academic This link opens in a new windowHeinOnline is the world's largest fully searchable, image-based government document and legal research database. It contains comprehensive coverage from inception of U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and more than 2,600 scholarly journals. HeinOnline provides topic specific databases including all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, Criminal Justice, Religion and the Law, and Women and the Law among others. Full text of state and federal case law powered by Fastcase is included.
- Morningstar This link opens in a new windowFind a stock or fund to meet your needs, research current or prospective holdings or see how your investments work together. Morningstar's data reports cover more than 20,000 securities.
- Regional Business News This link opens in a new windowThis database provides comprehensive full text for regional business publications (including titles from Crain Communications). This database has full text for more than 60 sources.
- Statista This link opens in a new windowStatista.com, by Statista, Inc. provides data on over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources, categorized into 21 market sectors. Statista.com provides quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas.
A-Z Databases
- A-Z DatabasesThe A-Z Database list shows all the databases available to search at SU. The list is alphabetical but you can search by subject, title/keyword, or provider.