English 1185: Rights and Fictions  Tags: human_rights literature linguistics_language_literature  

Databases identify and locate articles published in magazines, journals and newspapers. Many databases also index essays, book chapters and monographs.

Tip 1: Some of the databases provide full-text coverage of journals.

Tip 2: If the database does not provide full-text, use Get it! Cornell or search the library catalog for the journal title. This will provide you with Cornell's holdings of the journal (in both print and electronic form).

Tip 3: For more precise searching, it is best to search the databases individually (rather than using Find It!).

PERIODICAL INDEXES

While the Library Catalog contains records for journals, it does not include records for individual articles published within those journals. The following is a list of online indexes to journal articles; some are subject-specific and others are multidisciplinary. Some, like JSTOR, contain or link to the full text of the article online. Be aware that not all journal literature is available online, and that the Library holds many journals in printed form only. Scroll down to watch a podcast on identifying scholarly and peer-reviewed journals.

• America, History and Life.
  A complete bibliographical reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present, covering over 2000 journals published worldwide.

   

• Historical Abstracts.
  This historical periodical database includes annotated references to the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the U.S. andCanada which are covered in "America: History and Life"). Covers over 2000 journals, including historical journals from almost every country and selections of journals in the social sciences and humanities for researchers and students of history.

 

•  Humanities International Index
  A comprehensive database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities and provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracting for over 1,700 journals and contains more than 1.5 million records. Humanities International Index includes deep backfiles for some of the most important journals in the area of humanities. The database includes all data from American Humanities Index plus bibliographic records from a multitude of international journals, books and reference works. This database provides citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.

 

•  JSTOR.
JSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, music, ecology and botany, business and other fields. It includes the following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science, Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.

 

•  MLA International Bibliography. 
An international database providing references to scholarly articles from over 4000 journals dealing with languages, literature, folklore and linguistics. It is useful for finding literary criticism of a particular author or work, as well as articles on literary theory, women's studies, popular culture, and performing arts.

 

• PAIS International
  [Cornell Networked Resource]
  Contains citations to public policy literature of economics, government, law, international business, political science, public administration, and other social sciences. It includes references to journal articles, books, government documents, reports and pamphlets in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The print version, Public Affairs Information Service. Bulletin, provides access to items indexed back to 1915. Many entries include brief abstracts.

• Philosopher's Index
  Provides indexing and abstracts from books and many journals on philosophy and related interdisciplinary fields published in the U.S. and the Western World. Coverage is from 1940 to the present for U.S. materials, and 1967 to the present for non-U.S. references.

 

• Research Library (ProQuest) 
Indexes and abstracts over 1600 general interest magazines and scholarly journals including all the magazines in Reader's Guide and most of the scholarly journals from Social Sciences Index, Humanities Index, General Science Index. It also includes citations and abstracts to selected television and radio programs. The Library subscribes to most of the periodicals indexed. Holdings can be found easily since the titles are linked to the online catalog.

 

• Web of Science
  An index to works cited in the current periodical literature of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences covering and selectively indexing thousands of journals. The unique feature of a citation index is that it allows the user to find relevant material based on where a particular reference has been cited. Using a key reference on a topic, other articles which have cited that article are identified. The index can also be searched by authors and by keywords in the titles of articles.

Evaluating the sources you find is a crucial step in the process of scholarly research. The questions you ask about books, periodical articles, or multimedia sources are similar whether you're looking at a citation to the item or have the item in hand.

Watch this video to learn how to identify scholarly journal articles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDGJ2CYfY9A

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