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Using Articles
Scholarly articles from journals contain the most current writings about a subject, for the most part. While books also contain current analysis, articles are the most common form of publishing. Use articles when you need an in-depth interpretation of a text or theory. Articles often tend to be shorter than book chapters, as well, and can give you a focused analysis.
Databases
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowA multi-disciplinary database which offers information in many areas of academic study, Academic Search Ultimate focuses on a range of subjects including biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, religion/theology, and more. Academic Search Ultimate indexes more than 17,000 periodicals and includes full-text articles from more than 10,000 journals, nearly 6,800 more journals than Academic Search Premier. Academic Search Ultimate was acquired primarily for its full-text journal articles in science, engineering, and health sciences.
- Black Drama This link opens in a new windowThis database contains over 1300 plays by over 200 playwrights, together with information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Over 500 of the plays are published there for the first time. The works from early 20th-century America include writings of the Harlem Renaissance, works performed for the Federal Theatre Project, and plays by dramatists through t…
- Chicano Database This link opens in a new windowThis database contains many types of material on Mexican-American topics, Chicanos, and the broader Latino experience, including Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants. The collection focuses on subjects relating to art, bilingual education, health, history, labor, language, literature, mental health, and politics. There are over 2000 journals and 60,000 records in the database, covering these topics from the late 1960's to the present.
- Proquest Dissertations & Theses: Global This link opens in a new windowDissertations & Theses: Global provides access to millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, available from 1861 to the present day. The database offers the full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and retrospective full-text coverage for many older graduate works. Over a million of these dissertations are available for download in PDF format, and over 2.1 million are available for purchase as printed copies. More than 70,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertation publishing partnerships with over 700 academic institutions worldwide and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations through UMI's Digital Archiving and Access Program. Full-text dissertations are archived as submitted by the degree-granting institution.
- JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection This link opens in a new windowJSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection provides full-text access to all content that the Jstor publishes. The majority of the database is archival content, and new issues are added to the collection periodically. New content may not appear in JSTOR until months or years after its initial publication date, and update frequencies for journals vary by title and publisher. Artstor content will be migrated to the Jstor platform. Artstor content can be found at https://www.jstor.org/images.
- Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction This link opens in a new windowThis database contains more than 100,000 pages of poetry, fiction, and drama written in English and Spanish by hundreds of Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latin authors working in the United States. Numerous Chicano folk tales, audio files of selected poems and plays are included. Nearly 800 items (poems, novels, and plays) in the collection have never been published before.
- Modern Language Association (MLA) International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowIncludes the MLA Directory of PeriodicalsThis database consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. It provides access to records in over 3,000 journals and series, as well as a collection of monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to the full text of over 400 scholarly peer reviewed journals by over 100 publishers in the humanities and social sciences.
- Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels This link opens in a new windowUnderground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels is a primary source database focusing on adult comic books and graphic novels, beginning with underground comix from the 1960's to the works of modern sequential artists. The collection contains more than 75,000 pages of comics and graphic novels, along with 25,000 pages of related interviews, criticism, and journal articles.
- WorldCat (FirstSearch) This link opens in a new windowWorldCat's search covers over 30 million records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries, including manuscripts written as early as the 11th century. The database has holdings information for many US and some foreign libraries, and is updated daily. WorldCat Quick Search is also available to the general public.
Suggested Search Terms
When searching for critical articles in a database, you should take the important words of your topic and use those as your search terms. From there, you can check the subject terms on the articles you like, the subject terms on the side, or the subject list/thesaurus of the database. For instance, if you were looking for articles discussing gender if Twelfth Night, you can put "gender" in the first search box and "Twelfth Night" in the second. Make sure to include synonyms for your search terms with an OR; many databases will autofill these for you. And don't forget to ask your librarian for help!
