LibGuides: Horticulture Research Guide: Find Sources

Database Search Strategies

These search strategies can help you in any database you use.

Using the right keywords can affect how relevant your results are. Start with your main ideas, then add or revise using keywords as you encounter new ones.

Example research question: How effective are urban gardening techniques in maximizing crop yield and plant health in limited space environments?

Main ideas: urban gardening, crop yield, plant health, limited space environments

Search with specific keywords (not questions or long phrases).
Search 2-3 keywords at a time. Each keyword you add will reduce your results.
Use quotation marks around words you want to search as a complete phrase ("plant health").
Limiters: always use the Full Text limiter. Use the Peer Reviewed limiter if that is the kind of information you need. You can also adjust the date range to get the most current articles.
Number of results: Strive for no more than 200 hundred results. If you have more than that, try revising your search. You want a list of results that is manageable so you can look through them all.

Types of Keywords

Keywords fall into three main categories: Broad, Narrow, and Related.

Broad: More general categories (agriculture)
Narrow: A specific category (urban agriculture)
Related: Synonyms or similar terms, or terms that are connected to your topic (city gardens, vertical farming, rooftop farm)

Databases for Horticulture Research

Gardening and Horticulture (Gale OneFile)

Gardening and Horticulture serves horticultural researchers and features articles and reference titles including Handbook of Flowers; Foliage and Creative Design; Computer Graphics for Landscape Architects; and more. Superior search indexing gives users the ability to search by publication date, document type, publication title, publication subject; or by documents with full text, peer-reviewed publications with little to no embargo; documents with images.
Agriculture (Gale OneFile)

With broad coverage of agriculture and its related fields, this collection provides a comprehensive view of a growing body of knowledge. Researchers will have access to current and authoritative periodical content that spans the industry-from practical aspects of farming to cutting-edge scientific research in horticulture. With strong emphasis on titles covered in the Agricola database, this collection of journal titles is focused on agriculture-related fields.
Agricola

Containing bibliographic records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library, AGRICOLA is an abstracting and indexing database that provides millions of citations relating to the field of agriculture. Citations are comprised of journal articles, book chapters, theses, patents, software, audiovisual materials and technical reports to support agricultural research.