When the database page appears, you will see a "Subject guide search" box, where you can type a topic (e.g. technology) to locate related topics (and then articles on following pages after you select a subtopic).

This is fine if you know which subject you would like to search under, but if you are interested in conducting a more general article keyword search, you will want to switch the search mode to "Relevance" mode. You can do this by clicking the "Relevance Search" link on the left side of the database page.

"Relevance" attempts to arrange search results according to how closely the article is believed to match your interests. This relevancy is gauged primarily according to how often a word (or several keywords, if you typed more than one) occurs in an article. Articles at the top of the list are calculated to be "more relevant" than those at the bottom of the list.

For a more general search without such relevancy ranking, you can switch to "Keyword" mode by clicking the "Keyword Search" link on the left side of the database page.

For more intelligent control over your search results, you might consider clicking the "Advanced Search" mode link on the left side of the database page to bring up more specific search options. In this search mode you can search titles, authors, keywords, topics, journal names, and other fields simultaneously.

Advanced Search mode also lets you limit search results to a specific date range and specify whether or not you want only full text (complete) articles and/or "refereed publications" (periodicals that are "peer reviewed" by other scholars in that field of interest). If you know the name of a journal or periodical, you can also type that into the Journal box to limit results to that publication.

If you're interested in articles from a specific publication, you might be better off using the "Journal Search" mode by clicking the same-named link on the left side of the database page. Once you do so, you can type the name of a publication (e.g. New York Times) and specify a date range.

The database will usually not contain all articles from any one particular publication. You can determine which dates of articles are available in periodicals indexed in the database by clicking the "Title List" link at the top of the database page.