A Guide to Education Research

Quick Search is Cline Library's discovery tool. It combines the "library catalog" and many of our online databases into one search. Quick Search is a good starting point for your research. If you are doing more advanced research in a specific discipline, you may want  to use a specific database. 

Included are:

• Books (physical and ebooks)
• Journals (print and ejounrals)
• Articles 
• Images
• Media items such as streaming videos, CDs, DVDs
• Course Reserves

Note: Using the "Expand Results" feature will add items not available from Cline Library. NAU and CCC students, faculty and staff can use Interlibrary Loan to obtain these items.

The Quick Search on the hompage is the default Simple search.  Searches from this box are only keyword searches.

• If you don't find exactly what you need right away, see the Limit my results column on the right of your search results page. Use relevant filters there to focus your search results further.
   
• To limit your search to physical items the Library owns, choose Available in the Library under the Availability
   
• Limit my results also lets you filter by Format Type (articles, books, newspaper articles, websites, etc.), by Creation Date, Author/Creator, Language, and more
• Select More Options under each category to see other ways to refine your results

Advanced Search gives you much more control over your searches. Use the drop-down menus to specify what type of search you want, what type of material you're looking for, what language, and even publication date or range of years.

Researchers may wish to enter Advanced Search immediately due to the full range of precise searching available here. 

• Advanced Search lets you search by Title, Author/creator, Subject, or Any field.  Looking for your search terms in Any field would be most flexible and a good choice if you're not certain where your search terms might occur in a record.
   
• You can specify word order for your search terms, if that is important. You can choose contains, is (exact), or starts with to specify word order.  Contains would be the most flexible choice and would find your search terms in any order.
   
• Material type includes All items, Books,  Articles, Journals, Images, and  Movies and Music.
   
• Language currently allows you to search for results in Any language, English,  French, or  German.  (If you would like to see search results in a different language, keep the Language drop-down menu set to Any language, do your search, and then use Tweak my results to see any other languages represented in your specific search results.)

We encourage you to sign in so that you can get the full benefit of the Quick Search

• You can pin searches to your favorites and they will be there when you sign in again. If you go in as a Guest, you can pin things to your favorites, but they will be gone when you exit the system
• There is some content from online journals and ebooks that will not display unless you are signed in.