Starting your research: An introduction to the database Academic Premier

You will access Academic Search Premier using the Library’s Home Page ( and clicking on the “Find Articles” link.

You will then click on the link “Multidisciplinary Resources”

You will note that “Academic Search Premier” is listed first. Please click on the link.

This is the Advanced Search page for Academic Search Premier - this is the default page. You will be using this page for most of your research.

I will start my search using the terms “witchcraft” and ‘literature”. I will leave the terms as keywords (the default search option) for now. I will also check the box labeled “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals”. I will leave the other fields blank.

I have received 94 results in this search. I would like to narrow the results as this list is a bit too long. I am going to take a look at the list of subject terms on the left and see if any of my original search terms is there.

By changing “witchcraft” to a subject I narrow my search to 60 results. I take a look at the results and notice that I am receiving articles about Salem, which I don’t want. I can either eliminate results that include “Salem” or limit my search to “Europe.”

I have left “witchcraft” as a subject and literature as a keyword but added “Salem”. You should notice that I have changed the “AND” to a “NOT” using the drop down bar to the left of the search terms. I now have 56 results.

I have now changed “Salem” to “Europe” and changed the drop down from “NOT” back to “AND”. I now have three results and they appear relevant.

I have clicked on the first result on the list “The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature.” You are able to see an abstract of the article as well as information such as author, title and subject terms. Also note the link to a pdf of the article (to print it out) or a link to this article to someone.

I decided to try one more search. This time I left “witchcraft” as a subject and “literature” as a keyword but added “Eng*” and “Europe” as a keyword. My result list is bigger but still seems very relevant.

You are now ready to try a search on your own.