Hiram College Library: History Subject Guide: Finding Articles

How do I find Journal Articles?

Use a database (an online index of articles) to help you locate articles for your research paper.

Databases can index all sorts of thinks (Netflix and Spotify are both databases!), but for our purposes today, we'll use them to find journal articles.

Library staff provide an overview to help you get started using online resources for your research:

Searching for Articles - Database Best Bets

Some databases are good for general searching because they cover a wide range of topics from business to history. Start your research with these databases and practice using them. You can then move on to subject-specific databases in future courses!

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.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window
Covers current and controversial social issues from immigration to gun control to fracking. Viewpoint essays present different sides to an issue and the database adds periodical articles, statistics, video/audio, news articles, and primary sources.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias This link opens in a new window
Articles written, peer-reviewed and edited by scholars covering 25 subjects. Articles, which are being added and updated on a regular basis, help break down broad subjects like International Studies or Neuroscience.

Refining Your Search Results

You can't read 100,000 or even 1,000 articles. Refine your searches to limit your results to just the articles you need!

Using Bibliographies to Find More Articles

Once you've found one good article, check that article's sources. Learn how to make use of those sources to add to your research:

Advanced Search Techniques

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!

The following video also outlines the ways to use advanced search techniques in databases.

How do I know which Database to Use?

Why should you begin your research with the library's homepage? How do I know which database to use? Library staff provide an overview to help you get started using online resources for your research.