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