Finding Articles

What are Databases?

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!

The library subscribes to a number of databases that provide historical results in addition to broader, interdisciplinary databases like JSTOR and Academic Search Complete. As an advanced searcher, you may also want to use OneSource to search multiple databases, the Hiram Library Catalog, and OhioLINK at once.

If you need assistance with searching, ask a librarian, or check out our article search tutorials:

Tutorials: Using the Library's Online Resources to Find Articles
Why should I start my research with the library's homepage? How do I use EBSCO databases? Can I get citation links for my articles? Tutorials on this guide give you the ins and outs of searching the library's online resources.

Databases and General Purpose Resources:

America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
Indexes more than 2,000 journals covering American and Canadian history from prehistory to the present. Also includes citations to relevant book reviews and dissertations.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable full-text of nearly 1,000 scholarly journals. JSTOR provides back files to the first issue of a journal, but stops 3 to 5 years before the current publication year. Covers all disciplines.
LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window
Indexes periodicals and books related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law This link opens in a new window
Statutes, court cases, books, articles, and other legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Cases go into the 20th century covering cases based on issues emanating from slavery.
Very Short Introductions This link opens in a new window
More than 600 e-books from Oxford University Press designed to offer concise and original introductions to a subject. Usually less than 200 pages, they are written by experts for a general audience.

Selected Primary Source Resources:

Your historiography research will focus more on content written by historians rather than primary sources. However, the library does subscribe to a number of databases that will help you find primary sources when you need them.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 This link opens in a new window
Primary source material from hundreds of institutions and organizations, both U.S. and international. Includes material from major international activist organizations and local, grassroots groups, as well as gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Contains some 1,300 monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery This link opens in a new window
Broken into four parts by a thematic approach, one can search any one or all five. More than 5 million cross-searchable pages: 12049 books, 170 serials, 71 manuscript collections, 377 supreme court records and briefs and 194 reference articles. The four thematic parts are; Debates Over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, The Institution of Slavery, The Age of Emancipation as well as searching all of the above at once.
Women's Studies Archive This link opens in a new window
The Women’s Studies Archive connects archival collections concerning women’s history from across the globe and from a wide range of sources. Focusing on the evolution of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the archive provides materials on women’s political activism, such as suffrage, birth control, pacifism, civil rights, and socialism, and on women’s voices, from female-authored literature to women’s periodicals.

Hiram College Library's Newspaper Subscriptions
The Hiram College Library subscribes to current and historical newspapers in print and online. This page highlights what we have and how to find them.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary database that indexes and abstracts some 9,300 periodicals, both popular and scholarly. Provides full-text to more than 5,300 journals.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable full-text of nearly 1,000 scholarly journals. JSTOR provides back files to the first issue of a journal, but stops 3 to 5 years before the current publication year. Covers all disciplines.
Electronic Journal Center (EJC) This link opens in a new window
Searchable, full-text issues of journals from a number of major publishers. More than 7,000 journals are available.

Google Scholar
Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. While Google Scholar itself is free on the web, many of the citations it references are not. Accessing Google Scholar via the proxied link will enable Find It! and other Links from within Google Scholar citations.

Education Research Complete This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts more than 1,500 journals covering all levels of education. Also includes full-text of more than 100 books and a number of conference papers.
Education Full Text This link opens in a new window
This full-text source of education scholarship provides coverage for a wide range of topics, including adult education, continuing education, literacy standards, multicultural/ethnic education, secondary education, teaching methods.

Content Includes: Full text of articles from over 350 journals as far back as 1996 Indexing of over 770 periodicals dating back to 1983 More than 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests
ERIC (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
The world’s largest source of education information with more than 1.4 million citations to articles, books, conference papers, policy papers, and other education-related resources. This EBSCO version adds links to the full-text of articles in other EBSCO databases, as well as a Find It link for other citations so you can determine if the Hiram College Library provides access to that article. Also provided are links to the full-text of ERIC documents on the Department of Education’s ERIC Web site.

Art Full Text (1984 - ) This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive resource covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as photography, folk art, film, architecture.Content Includes: Full-text articles from more than 300 periodicals dating back to 1995 High-quality indexing and abstracting of over 600 periodicals dating as far back as 1984, including 280 peer-reviewed journals Indexing and abstracting of over 13,000 art dissertations Indexing of nearly 200,000 art reproductions A database-specific thesaurus
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts some 5,000 business-related publications. Provides full-text to more than 4,000 periodicals. Coverage of important scholarly journals goes back to the first issue (or back to 1886 in the most extreme case). Also includes financial data, industry reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses, market research reports, and more.
Education Full Text This link opens in a new window
This full-text source of education scholarship provides coverage for a wide range of topics, including adult education, continuing education, literacy standards, multicultural/ethnic education, secondary education, teaching methods.

Content Includes: Full text of articles from over 350 journals as far back as 1996 Indexing of over 770 periodicals dating back to 1983 More than 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests
Film and Television Literature Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts some 600 periodicals related to film, film writing, and television. Includes reviews.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes more than 2,000 journals covering the history of the world (except the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present. Also indexes relevant book reviews and dissertations.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
The online version of Psychological Abstracts provides indexing to articles and books chapters published worldwide from 1887 to the present.
SocIndex with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Indexes, with abstracts, 590 "core journals" back to 1895 in all fields of sociology, including anthropology, criminology, demography, and urban studies.
ISI Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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 H iram Library Catalog
-if we don't have it, click on the OhioLINK button to find it in another Ohio library

OneSource Search

Advanced Search

Search Tips for America: History and Life

Learning how to use an advanced search and use it well are the keys to becoming a researcher. This video from the University of Guelph Library shows you some ways to modify your search results in America: History and Life to improve your searches. Visit their video directly on YouTube to access a transcript.