• use "quotation marks" around phrases, e.g., "women opera composers"
• truncate - shorten a word to its trunk or root to get alternate endings - with an asterisk * (shift 8), e.g., lgbt* finds lgbt, lgbtq, lgbtqia+
• apply Boolean connector AND to combine unlike ideas, e.g., opera AND women composers
• apply Boolean connector OR to connect synonyms, e.g., comic OR comique OR buffa

Put it all together:

• "women opera composers" in one box
• AND (comic OR comique OR buffa) in the next box
• use parentheses in single-box searching - when you don't have another set of boxes, e.g.,:
• "american opera composers" AND (comic OR comique OR buffa) AND lgbt*

Use the left or right menus to narrow your results, e.g., by language, date, subject, etc.

Databases have a citation (information about an article such as the title, author, name of the journal or magazine, volume and issue (which correspond to the date), date, and pages) and sometimes they will also contain an abstract, or summary, of the article.

Databases also often cite multiple types of resources - books, essays or chapters, government documents, etc.

Some databases will also have the complete item (called the full text): you should see a link to an HTML or PDF document. Or click on - this will check the other library databases for the full text of the article.