COMM 721: Public Relations Campaigns

University of Delaware Library databases provide a rich supply of articles and reports for public relations research.  You will find useful information in business, communication, statistical, and public opinion databases.  

Search tips:

• Enter your search terms on the advanced search screen to allow for maximum control of your search. 
• Put quotation marks around words that you want to keep adjacent to one another such as "public relations." 
• Combine your search terms with the connectors "and," "or," and "not."  Put terms connected by OR in parentheses if you type them on one single line.
• The advanced search screen allows you to make specifications such as requiring that your search terms appear in the title of the document or the abstract of the article.  This will help you obtain a smaller and more relevant list of search results.
• In most cases, the advanced search screen also allows you to select whether or not the search results must be scholarly or peer-reviewed and if the results must be published within a specific date range.

Sample Search: 

Goal: Increase public awareness of food banks

In the search below, we are searching for articles with the word food and the word bank adjacent to one another in the abstract or the summary of the article.  The search results must also have the exact phrase “public relations” or “social media” or the word awareness somewhere in the text of the article.  And finally, the articles must have been written within the last 10 years.

Search Results: