How are you feeling about your research today?
Good! I've got this!: 3 votes (50%)
OK: 2 votes (33.33%)
Unsure, but figuring it out: 1 votes (16.67%)
Not good.: 0 votes (0%)
Total Votes: 6
Popular, Professional, and Peer-reviewed
Recommended Online Databases for Locating Articles
- Academic Search Complete EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals - of which more than 7,300 are peer-reviewed journals.
- Gender & Society (SAGE Journals) This link opens in a new windowPeer-reviewed, official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society; focused on the study of gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces.
- LGBTQ+ Source EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines, newspapers and videos.
- LGBTQ+ Studies AVON Academic Videos Online - ASP This link opens in a new windowProvides a searchable online collection of recent documentary, performance, animation, and biographical videos about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender political, cultural, and social movements.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowProvides access to full-text news, business, and legal publications using a variety of flexible search options. Access over 15,000 news, business, and legal sources.
- Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new windowDatabase of contemporary social issues with content structured to promote critical-thinking skills. It contains reference book titles, pro and con viewpoint articles, and a variety of periodicals, podcasts, reviewed Web links, images, statistical tables, charts, and graphs.
- SocINDEX Full Text EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides more than 860 full-text titles including core sociology peer-reviewed journals.
- Search OWL (Oakton's Whole Library)
Via this link you can search for books, news articles, and academic articles. It casts a very wide net so you'll have to narrow your search quite a bit. After you enter the initial search, you can filter (limit) your results to peer-reviewed journals.
- eHRAF World Cultures This link opens in a new windoweHRAF World Cultures contains ethnographic collections covering 281 cultures, including indigenous peoples and ethnic groups, as well as immigrant cultures in the U.S. and Canada. Comprehensive summaries cover topics such as economy, history and cultural relations, family and kinship, sociopolitical organization, and religion.
- Human Rights Studies Online - Alexander Street Press This link opens in a new windowProvides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event.
Database search strategies
Some Things to Keep in Mind When Searching Library Databases:
For the purpose of writing a paper/essay, you most likely will state your topic in a form of a question. For example, if you are interested in finding out about eating disorders, you might ask the question, "What effects do eating disorders have on the health of college students?"
Before Starting Your Search, Identify the main concepts or keywords in your thesis question:
- Write ONLY main terms in your search box. For example, eating disorder(s) and college (students).
- Remember to try different terms (synonymous) when searching for resources on your topic (use a thesaurus, if you can't think of any).
- For instance, when attempting to locate resources on vaccines, try also searching for vaccination(s) or immunization(s)
- Know the difference between a subject (which narrows a search) and keyword (which broadens a search) search:
- A keyword search literary searches for all the words that you include in your search box. The words DO NOT have to appear as a phrase, or next to each other, unless you tell the computer that is what you want by placing "quotations" around your words. So note that your search terms may appear anywhere in a record.
- Recall that a database record includes the title of the article, title of the source, author(s), other publication info, a topic/subject area, and an abstract.
- If you want to narrow your search and obtain more accurate results, use a subject search. When employing this particular search only the subject field in a database record is searched. The subject of an article can be thought of as the "aboutness of a source/article." The subject field contains words that best explain what a particular article is about. The subject field in other words indicates that this article is "about this topic" and does not simply contain these search terms somewhere in the citation/abstract/full-text of the article.
- A keyword search literary searches for all the words that you include in your search box. The words DO NOT have to appear as a phrase, or next to each other, unless you tell the computer that is what you want by placing "quotations" around your words. So note that your search terms may appear anywhere in a record.
Whenever possible remember to select FULL-TEXT:
- If you need an article right away, select the full-text box whenever possible, because not all articles indexed in library databases are full-text.