About searching databases
Searching a database can focus your search results to an academic discipline, e.g., "Worldwide Political Science Abstracts" or to an area, e.g., "Africa-wide". Scroll through the list of databases below to find one, or several, that may be useful for your research.
- Enter the key words and phrases of your research question. Start broadly, with just a few terms or phrases, e.g. oil AND ogoni
- You can add terms to narrow your search
- Look for relevant subject headings or descriptor terms.
- Most databases also allow you to restrict to scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, and of course by date published and by language, etc.
Finding the full text:
If the database entry does not include the full text of the article, look for the "Get it! Cornell" link.
Finding the full article
- In database records, look for the "Get it! Cornell" links. "Get it!" will search the library catalog to see if we have the volume, issue and year of the cited journal online. In many cases, it will take you directly to the article.
- When it doesn't take you to the full article (the "full text"), you may need to search the catalog for the journal, or request it via Interlibrary Loan.
- Ask a Librarian! We're happy to help.
Finding a book/ebook, by title
- From the library homepage, go to the library catalog.
- Enter the title. Note: Title searches can be finicky. It's often helpful to leave out punctuation like colons. The "All Fields" search will generally work well, but the dropdown menu provides additional options to search by title, journal title, title begins with, along with other options
