Scholarly Articles
How to Search the Databases:
To conduct a search, enter keyword(s) describing your topic. Use the connectors such as AND between your keywords or enter keywords in different search boxes. For example if you are interested in women during the British Raj, you could enter the following search terms:
Use quotation marks for a phrase. Example: "British Raj".
You can use synonyms or related terms to describe your topic. For example, "British Raj" or "British India" in the search above.
You can also use an asterisk (*) at the end of a word to retrieve various endings. For example, India* would retrieve Indian as well as India.
When you look at your list of results in the database, if the full-text of an article is not readily available click on the FIND IT AT SCU icon to see if it's available in another database or in print in the library.
Finding Scholarly Articles
The reason you look for scholarly articles is to find out what other scholars have said about your topic. Because this is a history class, you want to find articles with a historical perspective. Your best bet is to use the database Historical Abstracts to find articles published in history journals. However, depending on your topic, you might also want to use other multidisciplinary databases that include articles from journals in other disciplines (humanities in general, political science, sociology, etc.).
Start with the databases below:
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the history of the world (except the United States and Canada) from 1450 forward. It provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955, as well as access to the full text of more than 316 journals and more than 138 books.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, biology, and other fields of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each title. Updated monthly.
- Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowIndexes and abstracts English-language articles in the most important journals in the humanities, from 1984-present. The full text of many of these articles is available online from 1995 forward. Updated daily. For indexing of articles appearing prior to 1984, use Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective.
- Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowContains more than 1,800 full-text articles and over 14,000 abstracts from scholarly journals and dissertations in the social sciences such as criminal justice, education, language behavior, linguistics, political science, sociology, etc.