EALC 200: Approaches to the Study of East Asian Cultures (BMC/HC) Fall 2024

Other useful databases

Why not just use Tripod?

Searching Tripod can often return a lot of results, of many different types and from different sources. But having too many results, and with too broad a focus, can almost be as much of a problem as having too few.

Using specific databases will allow you to search only among a more select group of sources, and these are usually tailored for doing research in certain disciplines.

Tip: most databases allow you to use the same advanced searching techniques covered in this guide's discussion of Tripod searching.

Citation search in Google Scholar

Google Scholar makes it easy to find books and articles which have cited a given work. This could be useful if you are interested in the way that work has been received by other scholars or how influential it has been. (It is important to understand that Google Scholar is not exhaustive. There may be many other references not accounted for here. This is only one reason not to take what you see here as an absolute indication of the work's scholarly impact or importance.)

The animation below demonstrates the process for finding these citing works, but the basic steps are:

• In the initial Google Scholar search window, use title words and/or an author's name in order to locate the original article or book.
• Find the intended work in the search results.
• The third link from the left under the intended original work will say Cited by [#].
• Clicking on this link will retrieve a list of articles and books which refer to this one.

More subject-specific databases

For certain topics, it may also be beneficial to search even more focused databases.

One example is if your topic deals with religious themes in Korean cinema. You might use a database focused on religion, such as ATLA, linked below, to search for "Korean cinema" (or using those similar search words, "movies," "film," "motion pictures," etc.) to see scholarly materials in religious studies and theology that deal with that subject.

• (Note that searching this way, you will not need to search for "religion," etc., because everything contained in the database already deals with that area.)

Another example might be if you are researching the artistic expression specific to an intellectual or political movement, cultural epoch, nation, and so on. Then you might use Oxford Art Online (link below).

To search or browse through all the databases you might access, see the A to Z Listing of Databases.

Another good strategy going beyond doing general searches in Tripod is to look at specific journals related to your topic. Journals are one of the main venues in which scholars communicate their findings and ideas to each other, and is often where their debates play out. When a researcher publishes their work, they want their peers to read and engage with it, so they will want to have it published in place where people interested in that field or topic will be looking for it, and where they themselves will also try to publish their own work. 

Because of their focus on certain subjects (and often from certain disciplinary angles), it may be worthwhile just to look through various issues of a certain journal to see if any articles seem relevant for your topic. If your interest is in gender in Daoism, 

A good list of examples is included further down in this section, but here are some ways you can find them yourself:

• Tripod Advanced Search
  • In the Material Type drop-down menu, select Journals and then search for title or subject words likely to be connected with your topic. Remember that using OR, AND, and NOT may be helpful.
    
    
    
    
     
• Noting which journals relevant articles have appeared in
  • You may look these up in Tripod using the method above, but just searching by the title in quotations.
• Journal sections in bibliographies
  • Many Oxford Bibliographies contain a section with suggested journals, and will usually provide some context or explanation about how to approach them. See for example this entry on Chinese Orientalism:
    
     
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Below is a list of potentially useful examples of journals you might consult.

Journals that focus (or substantially focus) on East Asia:

Journals that focus on China:

Journals that focus on Japan: 

Journals that focus on Korea: