Research Guides: PHIL 399: Senior Seminar (HC): Finding Articles and Books

Subject Specific Databases- Philosophy

It can be particularly fruitful to use a subject-specific database, in this case, databases that are solely dedicated to Philosophical topics.

Philosopher's Index
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Provides citations and abstracts of journal articles, books, anthology contributions and book reviews published worldwide. Topics covered include: ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of law, religion, science, history, education, and language. Covers 1940-present. Contains over 328,000 records as of August 2005. Monitors over 550 journals from more than 40 countries.

Philosophy Compass
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This is an important resource for literature reviews that analyze current research on many different topics in philosophy. Use the search box in the righthand corner for finding material related to your topic. See the journal's home page for more information.
PhilPapers
Will often index more resources than Philosopher's Index. You might want to use their "fuzzy" search option in Advanced search to broaden your search results.

General Databases for Articles

Sometimes, using a general database for research can be a good place to search, depending on your needs. These databases will search enormous batches of materials, therefore your results may be quite large. Consider using the "filters" available to narrow your search.

JSTOR
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Provides full-text and page images from many of the top journals in most academic disciplines. Coverage is from the inception of the journal through three to five years ago.
ProQuest Arts and Humanities Database
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This ProQuest full-text journal database, formerly known as "ProQuest Arts and Humanities Full Text" has been created to complement the CSA Illumina portfolio of Arts and Humanities databases. Subscribers to any of these databases - including ARTBibliographies Modern, Design and Applied Arts Index, British Humanities Index, MLA International Bibliography and Philosopher's Index amongst others - can link directly from citations in these indexes to the corresponding full-text articles. The contents reflect the full interdisciplinarity of contemporary study in the arts and humanities, with the inclusion of selected titles from related fields that are also covered by these indexes, such as ethnic and area studies, politics, economics and women's studies.
Dissertations & Theses
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ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is a collection of scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences that consists of 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, and 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Coverage is from 1861 to the present day.

Google Scholar

Google scholar is a good resource for finding who has cited any given source. Search for a book or article in it and then look for the "Cited by" and a number beneath each of the search results. If you click that, you can often find very important information about that source, and develop your research. NOTE!!! Not everything you find on Google Scholar is from a peer-reviewed, reputable location. Be sure to do some research about the resources themselves. Use Google Scholar in conjunction with other resources.

Identifying Relevant Books

Use the Tripod catalog for your home institution to look for all books (print and digital) owned by your college as well as the print titles at the other two schools.

The following searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books. Note that all these searches are in the Books+Media channel. In examples #1 and 4 below, using keywords [Any Field] (rather than subjects) will pick up results from chapter titles.

derrida AND heidegger AND ("margins of philosophy" OR copula OR tympan OR reason*) [Any Field]
(feminis* OR women* OR gender*) AND identity AND (philosophy OR theory) [All Subjects] Limited to publications 1990-2023
law AND (moral OR morality OR ethic*) AND (philosophy OR theory) [All Subjects]
(abstract OR non-representation* OR non-figural OR kandinsky) [Any Field] AND (art OR aesthetics) [Subjects] AND (philosophy OR theory) [Subjects]

** Try opening a search above and replace one of the topics with your research interest.

Beyond the Tri-College Collections

WorldCat
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A catalog of the holdings of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries throughout the United States and around the world.

An important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tricollege Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 500 million records for material owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan. Use the button to place requests. Also note that older books, reports and dissertations are often listed with open access URLs.