IAS H102: Honors Thesis Seminar

See also

For specialized encyclopedias and specific databases useful for international and area studies research, see this detailed library  guide to resources for IAS 102

Where's the PDF?

Many article databases contain information about articles (citations or abstracts), not the entire text of the article.  Once you've used an article database to find articles on your topic, you may need to use this button:uc-eLinks button in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.

UC-eLinks will link you to the online full text of an article if UCB has paid for online access; otherwise, UC-eLinks will help you locate a print copy on the shelf in the library. If UCB doesn't own the article in print or online format, UC-eLinks can also help you order a copy from another library.

For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 4 min.)

You can also set up UC-eLinks to work with Google Scholar.  For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 2 min.)

Find an Article from a Citation

Here's a citation for an article...how do you find the whole article?

Gaultney, J. F. (2010). The Prevalence of Sleep Disorders in College Students: Impact on Academic Performance. Journal of American College Health, 59(2), 91-97. 

This citation is for an article published in 2010 in the Journal of American College Health, a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. There are several ways of determining if the article you're looking for is available at Berkeley:

Option 1: Use Google Scholar to locate a citation for the article, and UC-eLinks to retrieve the full text.

Paste or type the citation into Google and pull down the Google Scholar tool. Here's how:

jing thumbnail

Remember to set up off-campus access if you're off-campus. Here's what to do if you don't see UC-eLinks in your search results.

Note: Google Scholar does not cover all publishers, and many journals indexed by Google Scholar have partial coverage only (some years/volumes missing). Also, not all articles found through Google Scholar will be available online. If you can't find the full text of your article this way, read on for more options!

Option 2: Look up the journal title in OskiCat or Melvyl.

You can also search for the title of the journal (NOT the article title!) in either OskiCat or Melvyl.  They will tell you:
  • if we subscribe to the journal you're looking for
  • which years we have
  • whether our subscription is print ("hard-copy") or online
  • what the call number is (for print journals)
  • where to find the journal online (for online journals)
  • what's the latest print issue we've received (OskiCat only)

Click this link for a 45-second demo.

Read more

Databases To Start

You have access to hundreds of databases in specific disciplines.  Here are a few that work for almost any topic.

  • Academic Search Complete
    A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 10,900 journals and other publications in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese; full-text is available for over 5300 journals.
  • JSTOR
    Includes millions of articles in over 1000 scholarly journals, but NOT the most recent 3-5 years of any of them.
  • ProQuest Social Sciences
    An interdisciplinary metasearch through core indexes in the social sciences including Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, PsycInfo, PAIS, and more.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an easy way to do interdisciplinary research, and with some settings changes can become even more useful.  You need a Google account to use these features.

  • Set up a Google Scholar Alert to be automatically notified when new articles are added to Google on topics of interest: 

Do your search in Google Scholar. Look in the green toolbar for the envelope icon, and click it.  New items will be sent to your email account as they are found by Google.

  • Make Google display links to full text of articles that Berkeley subscribes to:

Open Scholar.  Click on the gear icon gear icon in the upper right corner, and choose 'scholar preferences'. In the new window, scroll down to 'Library Links', type the word Berkeley.  Choose University of California, Berkeley-- UC eLinks, and Open Worldcat Search.

Do a Google Scholar search. Click on the "Cited by" link under a citation and select the "Search within articles citing..." checkbox.

Finding Other Databases

Search an article database to find citations (title, author, title of journal, date, page numbers) for articles on a particular topic.  The Library gives you access to over 200 article databases covering different disciplines.

1.  Think about which academic disciplines might write about your topic.  Examples:  literature, film, anthropology, history...

2.  Find the appropriate article database by subject (academic discipline or department).  Look for "Recommended" databases.

Library home > Articles > Article Databases by Subject

3.  You may need databases that cover diffferent types of materials - historical or ethnic newspapers, congressional information, primary sources, etc:

Library home > Electronic Resources > Electronic Resources, Types A-Z >

Last Update: February 20, 2013 12:14