Finding Articles

1. It is often a good idea to begin your search for an article in a general database like EBSCO's Academic Search Elite, Proquest's Research Library, or Wilson OmniFile. Since all of these vendors have similar search screens and limiters, we will use Proquest's Research Library for the example.

2. Select "Articles / Databases" under the Resources column of the library homepage.

3. On the Database by Subject page, select General Databases from the subject grid.

4. On the General Databases page, select Research Library from the list of databases.

5. Notice that the search screen has several boxes for search terms, a date limiter option and a checkbox for selecting scholarly journals and full text only.

For demonstration purposes, suppose we are researching the relationship between unemployment and stress. Enter only keywords in the search boxes.

Often your instructors require scholarly journal articles rather than magazine or newspaper articles. If so, make sure to check the appropriate boxes. For this example, assume that the checkboxes have not been checked.

6. Remember, for this example we assumed that the Scholarly journals checkbox was not checked. The search yielded 248 results. Notice the journal type tabs just above the results. Since we did not narrow our journal types before the search we can do so now by clicking on the Scholarly Journals tab.

7. In addition, notice the Suggested Topics box above the search results. These are the subject headings for this search. Click on the second suggestion, "unemployment and stress."

8. After selecting the Scholarly Journals tab subject heading suggestion mentioned above, the results have been narrowed down to 40. Look at result number 7 below. The two statements in the red box indicate this article is full text in two different formats. Selecting either one of these links will bring up the full text of the article.

9. Now look at result number 8. The full text of this article is not available in this database but it may be available either in another database or from the periodical room. Click on the Find a copy link.

10. Selecting the link above takes you to the page below. Just beneath the article title, click on the Article Linker button.

12.This link will bring up the full text in the Psyc Articles database. If the article is only available in PDF, you may have to click on the PDF link at the top of the results page in order to bring up the full text.

13. Now let's take a look at result number 9 in the result list of step 9 and again go through the steps to access the Article Linker. The Article Linker screen for that article appears below. Notice the statement in the red box. This shows that this article is not available either in print or electronic fromat through the library's website. This may be due to publisher restrictions. Remember not every article is available in full text format online. Full text online availability is a decision made by the publisher of the journal. Selecting the "Search WorldCat" button will help you to locate the journal in another library.