Databases are online indexes of journal articles and abstracts. Many include full-text journal articles. Some databases also contain book chapters, newspaper/magazine articles, citations for books, and more.
In plain English, a database is what you would use to find articles!
Article Subject Terms Examples:
Communication & Mass Media Complete
AGENDA setting theory (communication)
MUTED group theory
SPEECH codes theory
For authors and names try both first and last name.
If you use any one of these Subject Terms with a more specific term related to your topic you can rapidly find additional more relevant information. For example:
A great starting point for research in many subjects. Includes thousands of full-text articles from both scholarly journals and popular magazines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Containing more than 15,000 credible news, legal and business sources, Nexis Uni includes access to print and online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, as well as local, regional, national and international newspapers, legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, business information on U.S. and international companies and executives. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Full-text access to over 7,000 scholarly journals across many subjects—all in one searchable database.
A great starting point for research in many subjects. Includes thousands of full-text articles from both scholarly journals and popular magazines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Full-text access to over 7,000 scholarly journals across many subjects—all in one searchable database.
A one-stop place for business research. It has thousands of articles, scholarly journals (some going back over 100 years!), company profiles, industry reports, market research, SWOT analyses, and financial data. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Indexes psychology articles and book chapters published worldwide from 1887 to the present. Great for finding peer-reviewed, empirical research across many psychology topics. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Part of the Web of Knowledge platform, this is the combined database of the Science Citation Index, the Social Science Citation Index, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Searchable by keyword and author, but more importantly by cited reference.
Reading the bibliographies of a good article or book can be very helpful. But how do you find one of the sources listed? Look up the part written in italics.
If your citation looks something like the one below, then it's an article. (Hint: You know it's a journal article if you see volume/issue/page #s.)
Morrow, P. ‘‘Those Sick Challenger Jokes.’’ Journal of Popular Culture. 20.4 (1987): 175-84.
Finding it:
-look up the title of the journal in the OneSource Journal Finder (Note: Look up the journal title, which is in italics, not the "article title," which is in "quotation marks.")
-if the journal is available electronically, you can search within the journal itself or click on the "Full Text Access" link, and check if we have access to the year you need
-if the journal is available in print, read the rest of the journal's record to see if we have the volume/issue you need
If your citation looks something like the one below, then it's a book. (Hint: You know it's a book if you see a city and a publisher/press)
Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation; Bellin, Joshua David; 2005, Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press.
Finding it:
-look up the title of the book in the Hiram Library Catalog
-if we don't have it, click on the OhioLINK button to find it in another Ohio library
The words "AND," "OR," and "NOT" can help you make a search more precise. This is called Boolean searching, and it can seem really intimidating, but once you get the hang of them, Boolean searches can really help you!
For example, the search 'films AND psychology NOT children', will return a search with results that contain the keywords 'films' and 'pyschology' but not 'children' - important if you are only looking at adolescent psychology in films.
Learn more with this guide from the MIT libraries. It really helps explain Boolean searching, and you don’t have to be a computer scientist to understand!
If you already have a citation from a bibliography or other source, you have everything you need to find the article if the library owns it!
First identify the title of the journal or the title of the article.
Example:
Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5–13.
In the example above, The New Criterion is the title of the journal. The eclipse of listening is the article title. You know that the title is a journal article because the volume is typically listed in a journal citation and a book citation usually has a publisher name.
Then find the article: