L&S 000: Arts and Humanities Graduate Students

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

Library home > Articles > General Article Databases > JSTOR

Everyone Loves JSTOR:

• interdisciplinary
• scholarly
• full text available AND searchable - you may find topics you won't find elsewhere because they're only part of an article on a related topic
• covers journals from their earliest publication dates

CAUTIONS:

• DOES NOT INCLUDE THE LAST 3-5 YEARS of a journal!  not good for contemporary topics!
• doesn't include as many journals in a particular discipline as the discipline-specific database (example: MLA Bibliography for literature)

Sample searches in MLA Bibliography:

Library home > Articles > Article Databases by Subject > Literature > MLA Bibliography

1.  Example of a search using multiple terms, phrase searching, alternative terms, truncation,etc 

turk*
german*
immigra* or globaliz*

keywords = searches most important parts of the record

* = truncation symbol or wildcard;  child* = child, childs, children, childish, childhood

2.  use an official subject term ("descriptor")

translat* (keywords)
latin america*  (keywords)

translation (descriptor)
latin america* (keywords)

note:  descriptors are far from perfect in MLA Bibliography.  Be creative!

Sample search in JSTOR:

Library home > Articles > General Article Databases > JSTOR

advanced search

afro-peruvian

aguirre

Sample search:  Arts and Humanities Citation Index

to find articles that have cited a specific work or author:

cited reference search

foucault m*  (cited author:  always first initials(s) and wildcard *)

from the results screen, select all the records that appear to represent the title you're looking for (often multiple records appear); then click on "Finish Search"

click on an individual record; on the right you can find how often this has been cited by articles in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index database; view a list of citations, and find other articles that have cited at least one item in common

• click on the title to see full record (including abstracts and descriptors)
• to limit by publication type (peer-reviewed journals, conferences, books, etc.) click on the appropriate tab or link
• if necessary,look for other limits (latest update, journal articles only, english only) and more advanced searches
• select records to save to your personalized list; lists may be e-mailed, downloaded, printed