Locating and identifying scholarly and popular articles will be an important component to your research. In many fields, journal articles are the place to find reliable and important information. There are a couple of approaches for finding the most appropriate articles for your work.

The Libraries' maintains a Resources by Subject list of databases and other materials that can help you quickly find the key tools in your field. You may want to become familiar with the databases in your field.

If you have a favorite database or journal you can type it into the Smart Search box. It should present you with information about the source and give you a link to it. Alternatively, you can find a favorite e-journal by searching in the "E-journal search box to the left"

There are also some good, general purpose databases that include access to journal articles that you might benefit from using.

• Academic Search Elite
• Google Scholar - there are some instructions for setting Google's preferences and getting to full-text of materials
• JSTOR (does not include the last 5 years) 
• Project Muse (does contain the most current issues)
• PubMed for health sciences material
• Web of Science - good starting point for all sciences
• Compendex - for engineering materials

Class Activity

Since there are a lot of different research interests among participants, please try to use the Resources by Subject pages or Smart Search to find 1-2 databases you feel will be a good match for finding articles and other research materials on your subject. We will do a quick class participation exercise where each student announces their database of choice, and why they think it will be useful. If you're struggling to find a good match, please let Kelly know during the session.

Time permitting we will also help you configure and interpret results from Google Scholar.