Honors Writing 2211: Finding Articles
What is a Database?
What exactly is a database? Think about an old phone book, one in paper. The phone book has phone numbers by an individual's name or by a business name. Once the phone book goes online, it is now considered a database of information.
Webopedia defines a database in this way: (1) Often abbreviated DB. A collection of information organized in such a way that a computer program can quickly select desired pieces of data. You can think of a database as an electronic filing system.
Accessing National Newspapers
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2007)This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
- Proquest Historical Newspapers: Wall Street Journal Historical NewspaperCoverage: 1889 - 1995 -- Full-image archive of the Wall Street Journal. Every issue includes the complete paper cover to cover with full page and article images in PDF form.
Using Databases
Article Databases by Subject
The Marriott Library has organized research databases by general discipline. To find databases related to your research, use the drop-down menu on the Article Database page found under the tab for Research Tools. Once you access the research database at the top of the list is the database recommended by the subject specialist for that area. Below the recommended database is a list of databases related to your research area in alphabetical order rather than by relevance.
A Tip: 
You may wonder what this symbol means when it appears in the some of the Marriott Library's article databases. If you, the researcher, clicks on the link, the software represented by the icon will provide a link to an online version of the article if the library has purchased online access. You won’t have to look for the article in a printed version of the journal. If you do not find the full text, use InterLibrary Loan.
Library Article Databases to Get You Started
Don't stop here. More subject-specific article databases are available. These will get you started, but check with the subject guide in your area or make an appointment with your subject librarian.
- Academic Search UltimateA scholarly, multi-disciplinary database which offers information in many areas of academic study. Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 8,500 journals, with full text for more than 4,600 of those titles.
- CQ ResearcherPublishes reports 44 times a year that offer in-depth single-topic coverage of political and social issues. Reports investigated and written by a seasoned journalist. Editors identify the topic to be investigated, then the writer conceives its content, formulating the key questions that it will seek to answer; reads background material; interviews a range of sources; synthesizes available information; and writes the report.
- EBSCOhost DatabasesThis listing provides access to all of the databases that the University of Utah subscribes to through EBSCOhost. These are found elsewhere on our list of databases, but this serves as a common access point to all of them. For more information about the databases that EBSCOhost provides access to, open this list and then click on the 'More Information' button next to any of the databases.
- Google ScholarUsing this link from off-campus will route your session through our proxy server, and thus ensure that links within Google Scholar work with our resources when available. In order to retrieve full text articles you will need to set your preferences. To do this, go to the upper right hand side of the Google Scholar Page (next to sign in) and click on 'Settings'. Click on the 'Library Links' option in the left-hand sidebar, and then type 'University of Utah' in the text field. Hit enter and select the options for the University of Utah which appear below the text field. Hit 'Save' at the bottom right of the page, and you will then be ready to start using Google Scholar.
- Project MuseProvides full text, subscription access to current content from scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.
- ScopusScopus is a large abstract and citation database of research literature and web sources. The database is updated daily and contains over 16,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4,000 publishers, 1200 Open Access journals, 520 conference proceedings, 650 trade publications, 315 book series, 36 million records, results from 431 million scientific web pages, 23 million patent records from 5 patent offices, "Articles-in-Press" from over 3,000 journals, and links to other full-text articles and library resources.
- Web of ScienceWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary content database which covers over 12,000 journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 150,000 conference proceedings. Current and retrospective coverage is provided for the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Learn to Effectively Search
- Campus Guide for Usearch, the libraries' catalogFind books, journals, digital content and more using one search interface
•Access e-books and e-journals with one click
•Save items in a personal e-Shelf or export them to EndNote
•Narrow your results by availability, collection, resource type, topic, publication date, language, author, and classification
•Get suggestions for different searches or strategies if you don't find what you need
•Preview full-text and audio-visual materials straight from the results list
•Easier access to My Library Account
Why use a Help menu
Using Help menus are useful when exploring new databases. The most important thing you will learn by using Help is how to effectively use a database that is new to you. Let's not waste time! Get the scoop by checking out Help.
