Master of Management - UBC Okanagan

The Library subscribes to many, many databases, including interdisciplinary and subject-specific resources. A database is a collection of resources that might include full-text articles, books and book chapters, and even videos and grey literature. Sometimes only citations are provided, but the database will redirect you to another database where the full text is housed.

I have put links to some of the top research databases. But we have so many more! Please reach out to me for recommendations of databases and search strategies for your topic!

Note: do not Google database names - use the links in this guide, which lead you to a log-in page to connect via UBC Library's subscription.

Database search interfaces

Databases may have single search bars, or multiple search boxes with AND linking them together. The multiple boxes make it easy for you to keep similar concepts in the same boxes and combine them with OR, and then the concept groups are linked with AND - see more about keyword searching below. If only one box shows at first, usually you can add additional boxes or select an Advanced search option.

Here's what this looks like in one of my preferred databases, Business Source:

Keywords, not questions

Summon and databases do not respond well to entering whole sentences or questions into their search boxes, like you might try in Google.

Instead, you must enter keywords or phrases that represent the main concepts in your research question or topic, and connect the different concepts using AND.

Using quotes " " will have the database search for terms that are phrases (more than one word). If you leave the terms without quotes, the database will search for all those words separately.  Searching for supply chain management would search each of those terms, while "supply chain management" searches the whole term as a phrase. If you want just "supply chain" you could try that, too, but it's a little broader.

For example, if your topic is on how social media influences teenagers' mental health, you could use the search:

teenagers AND "social media" AND "mental health"

A potential database for this topic area would be Academic Search, because it is a broad general database that covers multiple subject areas. Watch the video below to see how you can run this search in that database.

Here is a bit more about how keyword searching and combinations works: