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Resources for Business Students: Find Articles

This guide is desgined specifically to highlight business related resouces and how to utilize them.

Work from Home

You can access all OCCC Library resources off campus, 24/7. 

When prompted, log on with:

  • Moodle/Portal username, which is typically: 
    firstname.middleinitial.lastname@my.occc.edu
  • Moodle/Portal password

Understanding Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Sources

When using a database to find articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers, it is important to understand the different types of sources.

Scholarly Sources 

  • Scholarly, or "peer-reviewed" sources, are written by scholars for other scholars and students in a particular field.
  • These sources undergo an extensive review process (peer-review) before they are published.
  • Usually uses highly technical, specific language in the article. 

Trade Sources 

  • Trade sources are written for experts and students in a given field.
  • Although they are not scholarly in nature, trade publications can be excellent sources of information.

Popular Sources 

  • Popular sources are written for a general audience.
  • Popular sources range from entertainment magazines like People to highly regarded national newspapers, such as The New York Times.
  • Evaluate articles to make sure they are credible and relevant to your assignment. 

Scholarly vs Popular Resources

Instructions: To make this Prezi work, select the "Start Prezi" in the middle of the screen. Use the arrows to move to the next screen or go back a screen. You may make the Prezi full screen, or zoom in and out with the arrows on the right, or using the scroll button on your mouse. 

Articles in Print

Still like to browse the old school print titles? We have current subscriptions to Business related titles in our print Newspapers and Magazines collection on the first floor of the library. Titles include:

  • Accounting Today
  • Bloomberg Businessweek
  • Entrepreneur
  • Forbes
  • Inc
  • Kiplinger's Personal Finance
  • Money
  • Wall Street Journal

Thousands of other titles related to Business and Economics, as well as the ones listed above, are available electronically through the EBSCOhost database.

Relevant Databases in EBSCOhost

When you are searching in EBSCOhost, you will want to select only the relevant databases. Selecting all the databases will bring back results that aren't related to your topic. The following are good databases in EBSCOhost that you can use to find resources relevant to business assignments.

  • Academic Search Premier: Covers multiple disciplines
  • MasterFILE Search Premier: Covers multiple disciplines
  • Newspaper Source Plus: Searches several hundred newspaper, television, and radio news transcripts
  • Business Source Elite: Provides full text for over 1,000 business publications, dating back to 1985. 
  • Regional Business News: Comprehensive full text coverage for regional business publications. 
  • Small Business Reference Center: Full-text periodicals and reports, sample business plans, U.S. tax forms, videos and reference books that support small business owners

Other databases in EBSCOhost might be relevant as well, it really just depends on your topic. As you are looking through the available databases, ask yourself if the topics covered in the database fits your assignment.

EBSCOhost Article Tutorial [Video]

Tips on Focusing Your Search in EBSCOhost

Like the OCCC Library Catalog, EBSCOhost has a way to narrow or limit your search results. Here is a list of the main limiters and how they can be used. 

  • Databases: Select relevant databases that are related to your search. Selecting all the databases will bring back results that aren't related to your topic.
  • Keywords: Use keywords, not sentences .
  • Add Keywords: Add additional keywords in the second or third search box to help narrow your topic.
  • Exclude Keywords: If your results bring back a lot of articles that isn't what you're looking for, but has a keyword in common, you can remove it from your search by using "NOT" instead of "AND" in the keyword area.
  • Full Text: Limits your results to only articles that are available to be viewed in their entirety. This is good for when you really want to find an article you can start reading right away, but bad because you will not see results for articles that are available in paper format in the OCCC Library. Also, you will not see other relevant articles that are not owned that you could then order via Interlibrary Loan. 
  • Peer Reviewed: Limits your results to only peer reviewed or scholarly articles.Your instructor will let you know if you need this type of article. If you aren't sure, ask your instructor or let a librarian read your assignment. 
  • Publication Date: Check to see if your assignment requires an article to be published within a specific date range. 
  • Source Type: Limits your results to a specific source like newspaper, magazine, or academic journal. 
  • Change Keywords: Sometimes there are synonyms for different words. If you don't like your results, consider changing the keyword to something similar (example: child, infant, toddler, etc.)

Creating Citations in EBSCOhost