Hiram College Library: British History: Finding Articles

How do I find 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 articles.

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

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.

Using the A-Z list to search for databases by subject

Use the A-Z list of databases for a complete list of all of Hiram College Library's database subscriptions listed alphabetically by name. Note that the name of the database might not match the subject. For example, CINAHL is a database about nursing, but it does not have nursing in its title. The search box at the top of the page allows you to search for subjects to narrow down your list of database choices.

Finding Articles

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.
Bibliography of British and Irish History This link opens in a new window
Provides bibliographic data for books, essays within books, and journal articles on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, for all time periods. Access is limited to 1 user at a time. Please log out and close your browser when you are finished.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index This link opens in a new window
This free to all index covers journal articles, essays in books, and book reviews about women and gender in the Middle Ages.
ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new window
A bibliography of books and articles related to all aspects of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (400-1700) in Europe.

Search Tips

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.

These databases search across a variety of subjects and may be useful for many different 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.
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.
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.
Access World News Research Collection This link opens in a new window
Research diverse perspectives, topics and trends that align with curricular areas such as Political Science, English, Sociology, Humanities, Business, International Studies and more. Features reliable, credible information from a wide variety of international, national, and local news sources including the Akron Beacon Journal, Plain Dealer, Record-Courier, and USA Today. Available remotely 24/7 on any device.
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.

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.

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

Articles & Databases

Click here for the A-Z List of Databases

The A-Z list provides a summary description of each database in the collection.

Individual Databases:

Databases by Subject:

Advanced Search

Browse Journal Titles by Subject

Precision in Searching

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!