ITT 181: Computing Technologies: Home

Once you have a good understanding of your topic and have selected a few keywords, LibrarySearch is a great place to start your research! LibrarySearch is a convenient way to search almost all of the library’s resources using a single search box.

Below are just a few of our databases useful for technology research. For more databases with technology content, check out our Databases A-Z page and select "Technology" from the drop-down.

Many images you find online are copyrighted and thus not available to be reused, although it is often hard to tell at a glance which images can be used and which cannot be. 

Some images CAN be used because they are in the public domain or because their creators have released them under a creative commons license. Public domain images have had their copyright completely waived by the creator OR the copyright has expired. Creators of images under a creative commons license retain the copyright, but grant users the right to use and distribute their work.

The resources below are just a small sample of the sources of creative commons images online. A more exhaustive list can be found here.

Primary sources in the sciences are first-hand accounts of original research or projects, written by the researchers themselves.

Secondary sources in the sciences analyze, summarize, or discuss information from one or more primary sources.

For example, a journal article written by a group of researchers about their experiment would be a primary source. A newspaper or magazine article summarizing the journal article for a non-scientific audience would be a secondary source. A book or review article that summarizes the researchers' journal article plus many others about similar topics to draw broad conclusions would also be a secondary source.

Confusingly, primary and secondary sources are often found in the same databases, so you have to apply a little thoughtful analysis to the item you are looking at to determine if it is a primary or secondary source.

• Journal articles reporting on original research
• Conference papers
• Interviews
• Lab notebooks
• Patents
• Technical reports
• Theses and Dissertations

• Books
• Review articles
• Textbooks
• Stories in popular media (newspapers, magazines, television) that summarize one or more research studies

• Most databases allow for searching with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT).
  • Use AND to focus your search and combine different aspects of your topic
  • Use OR to broaden your search and find sources that use different words for the same concept.
  • Use NOT to omit certain terms from your results.
• Use an asterisk (*) to truncate words if you want to search for all words with that root. For example, “environment*” would search for environment, environmental, environmentalism, etc.
• Put quotes around a phrase that you want the database to search as a phrase, rather than as individual words.
• Group synonyms inside parentheses using OR between each one

Example:

LibrarySearch is also the combined library catalog for the entire University of Maine system. You can search the entire system, or select University of Southern Maine Libraries in the drop-down.

Other helpful tips:

• If you find a book that is relevant to your needs, look at the "Subject" area of the book's record. Click on a few of the subjects to find other similar books.
• In many of the book records, you can look at the table of contents - click the link under the "Inside This Book" heading. This can help you determine if a book is right for your research.
• If USM doesn't have a book you want, you may request it.

Most databases, as well as LibrarySearch and MaineCat, assign subjects to books and articles. A subject is a designated word or phrase that describes an idea or concept and groups all articles or books about that concept together.

• Subjects are also variously called descriptors, controlled vocabulary, headings, or index terms.
• To search by subject you have to know the exact subject term. Most databases that use subjects have a Thesaurus that you can use to look up subject terms. You can also do a keyword search, find a book or article that is relevant to your research, and look at the subject terms assigned to it.
• LibrarySearch and MaineCat use Library of Congress Subject Headings and each database has their own list of subject headings, so you have to look up subjects in each database independently.