Databases for Locating Journal and Magazine Articles
Databases for searching broadly, across disciplines and source types:
- Academic Search PremierA general periodical database that provides citations and abstracts for articles from over 4,100 journals and includes full text from over 3,170 journals. You can limit your search to peer-reviewed articles (scholarly articles).
- ProQuest Research LibrarySearches thousands of general interest magazines and scholarly journals covering a wide variety of subjects and academic disciplines. It also includes citations and abstracts to selected newspapers, television and radio programs. We subscribe to most of the periodicals indexed. Many articles are available full-text from the article citation page. You can limit your search to peer-reviewed articles (scholarly articles).
Primary database to search for literature and literary criticism:
- MLA International BibliographySearchable database of journal articles, books, and dissertations published on modern languages, literature, and literary criticism. Coverage is international. Also includes citations to articles about literary theory, dramatic arts, folklore, and film.
In the absence of a direct article link, use our catalog to look up the journal titles and books from your search results.
Searchable full-text collections of scholarly journals:
- JSTORA large collection of searchable and browseable full-text scholarly journals. Covers from the beginning of the journal (earliest is 1665) up to within two to five years of the present [the "moving wall"]. List of journals included and years covered.
- Project MUSEContains full text of journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Covers such fields as literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and others.
Distinguishing between Reviews and Criticism
The simplest criterion for distinguishing book and film reviews from criticism is the time of publication of the review or critical article compared to the original publication date of the book or the release date of the film.
Book reviews are generally written around the time the book was originally published; literary criticism appears in later years. For example, reviews of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby that appeared in 1925 or 1926 (right after the novel was published) are book reviews, while literary criticism about the novel continues to be written today. The same general distinction applies to film reviews and film criticism.