Library Resources and Research (HC)

Scholarly journal articles are important sources of information offering:

• Originality.  Provides new evidence and interpretations.

• Authoritativeness.  Written by researchers for their peers.

• Documentation.  Cites key scholarship in footnotes that you can check.

• Reliability.  Reviewed by editors for significance and accuracy.

• Conciseness.  Presents an argument cogently

• Engagement.  Responds to issues and adds to an ongoing dialog.

• Currency.  Treats issues more quickly than books due to publishing schedules

1) Searching by the Article Title:  ""Dammit, Jim, I'm a Muslim Woman, Not a Klingon!': Mediating the Immigrant Body in Mohja Kahf's Poetry"

      Check Tripod using the search filter Articles or Proquest Research Library where this article and many more are available full-text.

2) Searching by the Journal Name: JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association 

      Check Tripod- Journal Search  where all journals, as well as newspapers and popular magazines, are listed by title.

         Tip: The Journal Search link is in the Navigation Bar.

3) Searching by Broad Subject - Multi-disciplinary Databases,:

      Use these journal databases where you can apply a full range of search techniques to find scholarship on your topic.  These include choosing exact terminology, using Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to define the relationships among search terms, and employing strategies for precise results with nesting, phrase searches, truncation, field searching, and sorting results.  See the Search Tips tab for more details.  

      These databases sometimes include magazines and newspapers.  They cover the top-tier journals but will not go into depth in the different subject areas:

ProQuest Research Library        This link opens in a new window   This link opens in a new window  This link opens in a new window

Provides citations and full-text magazine and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines, both scholarly and popular in scope. Covers 1971-present.

 

JSTOR       This link opens in a new window     This link opens in a new window     This link opens in a new window  

Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in most academic disciplines. But note that the most recent issues of journals  (three to five years or more) are not included in JSTOR.  Use a different database if you need very current information.

 

Web of Science      This link opens in a new window     This link opens in a new window     This link opens in a new window  
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<b>Indexes scholarly journals in all fields of study</b>.  Very current in its coverage of the latest issues published.

4)  Finding Articles in Subject-Specific Databases 

Take advantage of  more in-depth coverage of topics with databases focused on a specific academic discipline.

Where to find subject-specific databases?  Check the Research Guides website which outlines the major databases by subject area.  It also includes resource lists for classes and for categories like news and government information.  The Research Guides site can be searched by word or phrase (in quotations) to find specific topics.. 

See the lists in the next column for examples of major databases in the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences.

The resources here on journal articles will provide you with scholarly material for your essay.  When you select and read articles, be aware of the following issues:

• • Expertise - What is the author's training?  Has he or she published other material in this subject area?

• • Audience - Who are the intended readers?  Is it for the general public or for college students, faculty and researchers?

• • Discipline Focus - What subject approach does the author take?  Historical, political, literary?  If literary, is there a special interest in a particular kind of interpretation, such as linguistic, psychoanalytic or gendered?
• • Argument - What ideas does the author put forward?  See the accompanying abstract or skim the first page or two of the article.

• • Documentation - Is there a bibliography for further reading?  Are there titles there that are new to you and look relevant?

• • Date - When was the article published?  Do you need to find a more recent point-of-view?