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:
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 ▶️
SBJ delivers news, data, and networking for top sports business executives. It offers original reporting, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and industry events. SBJ Atlas provides key sports industry data.
The largest education research database (1.4+ million items: articles, books, reports, conference papers, policy documents). The EBSCO version links to full text when available. Use this for: Scholarly, peer-reviewed education research.
Covers 1,500+ journals on all levels of education (K–12, higher ed, adult learning, policy, and more). Includes some books and conference papers.
Use this for: A wide range of education topics.
Indexes 770+ education journals since 1983; includes 350+ in full text from 1996 onward. Covers topics from literacy to multicultural education to teaching methods.
Use this for: Peer-reviewed articles and test information.
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 ▶️
This is just a selection or databases for health and medicine. Use the A-Z Database list to locate additional databases.
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 ▶️
Note: SportDISCUS, Academic Search Complete, and other databases also contain news sources including Sports Illustrated. Use the search filters to select "Newspapers" and "Magazines" under Source Type to limit to just those more popular sources.
SBJ delivers news, data, and networking for top sports business executives. It offers original reporting, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and industry events. SBJ Atlas provides key sports industry data.
Research diverse perspectives on current events and trends in areas such as Political Science, English, Sociology, Humanities, Business, and more, with trusted sources like the Akron Beacon Journal, Plain Dealer, and USA Today.
Access every article published in The New York Times since 1851, fully searchable. To get started, enter “Hiram College” on the login page and click Go. If you're off campus, you'll be prompted to log in with your Hiram email credentials. Once you're connected, you can read articles on the website or download the NYTimes app for convenient mobile access using the same login.
Search the full-text of the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to the present.
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 ▶️
Search and read full-text articles from nearly 1,000 scholarly journals. JSTOR has older journal issues going back to the very first but usually doesn’t include the most recent 3 to 5 years. It covers lots of subjects across many fields. Watch Tutorials ▶️
Full-text access to over 7,000 scholarly journals across many subjects—all in one searchable database.
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.
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 ▶️
The largest education research database (1.4+ million items: articles, books, reports, conference papers, policy documents). The EBSCO version links to full text when available. Use this for: Scholarly, peer-reviewed education research.
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
You can't read 100,000 or even 1,000 articles. Refine your searches to limit your results to just the articles you need!
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:
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.
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.