Locating Books and Journal Articles
The resources on this page will help you find resources for your research paper, including books and journal articles. For additional resources on writing a literature review, please see the Literature Review tab.
Finding Books
- The Library CatalogComplete information on library materials held locally
- WorldCatUse this worldwide multi-library catalog to find materials in libraries beyond Cornell University.
Tips for Finding Books
- Your first search should be a very general keyword search.
- Never use a, an, or the when searching for a title.
- Always use the long view to review subject headings.
- If a record says "networked resource" it is usually available online.
- Always pay attention to the call numbers and note whether the material is shelved in the regular, oversized (+), or double oversized (++) sections.
Finding Articles
Recommended databases
- Business Source CompleteBusiness Source Complete provides full text for scholarly business journals and other sources, including full text for more than 1,800 peer-reviewed business publications. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business. This database provides full text (PDF) for top scholarly journals, including the Harvard Business Review. It also includes industry and country reports from Euromonitor and company and industry reports from Datamonitor.
- AB/IInformABI Inform is an extensive international business and management database, contains bibliographic citations, abstracts, and full text of articles appearing in professional publications, academic journals, and trade magazines published worldwide. Also known as ProQuest.
- Academic Search PremierThis multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 8,500 journals, including full text for more than 4,600 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
Other useful resources
- EconLit with Full TextAbstracts, indexing, and full-text articles in all fields of economics, including capital markets, country studies, econometrics, economic forecasting, environmental economics, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory, and urban economics.
- Historical AbstractsPublished since 1954, Historical Abstracts currently covers over 1,700 journals published worldwide in over forty languages. The database comprises over 720,000 entries from periodicals, with full-text links to over 135,000 articles and dissertations and masters' theses. Each year, the editors of Historical Abstracts add over 16,000 abstracts and citations, over 3,000 book citations, and over 1,200 citations of dissertations and masters' theses to the database from the current literature and publications. Additional bibliographical entries are also added to the database by editorial projects such as retrospective coverage of journal issues published prior to 1954.
- Sociology Source UltimateAn expanded version of SocINDEX, including greater coverage of peer-reviewed journals, international resources and open access titles. Provides citations and direct links to the texts of journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings, some as far back as 1880. Comprehensive coverage encompassing sub-disciplines and related areas of the social sciences, including labor, crime, demography, economic sociology, immigration, ethnic, racial and gender studies, family, political sociology, religion, development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, social history, theory, methodology, and more.”
- Nexis UniProvides access to full text resources on topics including current and general news; business and financial information; newspapers; company directories; government and politics; medical and health topics; accounting, auditing, and tax; federal and state laws; legal cases; and regulations. Resources include TV and radio news transcripts.
- JSTORJSTOR 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.
- Google ScholarGoogle Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.--About Google scholar.
Tips for Finding Articles
- The easiest way to find articles is to use the Articles & Full Text option on the library homepage.
- A more precise way to search for articles is to select and browse Research Guides on the library homepage, especially those recommended in this and other library guides.
- In the databases, choose the advanced or guided searches (usually 3 lines) to help you correctly format your search.
- Use OR between your search terms to broaden the search to include any of the terms.
- Use AND between your search terms to narrow the search to include all the terms.
- Find full text within the databases in html or pdf format.
- Use the GetIt!Cornell to link to full text found outside of the database.
- Ask a Librarian if you need further help!