Scholarly Articles

To find scholarly articles on your topic (secondary sources), try the following databases:

History Databases

Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
This 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.
America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
This database covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to the present, this database also provides full-text coverage of more than 196 journals and more than 92 books.

Social Science Databases

Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
Contains 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.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
This database is a primary resource for accessing the latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database draws information from an international selection of over 2,600 journals and other serials publications, plus conference papers, books, and dissertations. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles. 1963-present. Updated monthly.
Political Science Complete This link opens in a new window
Political Science Complete contains full-text for more than 520 journals and indexing & abstracts for over 2,900 titles, including top-ranked scholarly journals. The database has a worldwide focus, reflecting the globalization of contemporary political discourse. The database also features over 340 full-text reference books and monographs and over 36,000 full-text conference papers. The subject specific thesaurus contains over 17,500 terms to aid researchers.
Women's Studies International This link opens in a new window
The ultimate women's studies resource! Includes over 540,000 records drawn from a variety of essential women's studies databases. 1972-present.
GenderWatch This link opens in a new window
GenderWatch enhances gender and women's studies, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) research by providing authoritative perspectives from 1970 to present. GenderWatch provides access to over 300 titles, with more than 250 in full-text, from an array of academic, radical, community and independent presses.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Ethnic NewsWatch™ is really two databases, a current one, beginning in 1990 and including newspapers, magazines, and journals of the American ethnic and minority press, including scholarly ethnic studies journals.This is updated daily with new content. The other database is a historical file covering the years 1959-1989, incuding a rare collection of over 30 full-text titles, focusing on African American, Hispanic American, and Native American presses from 1959-1989.

Multidisciplinary Databases

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides 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.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary database providing access to more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. It also offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals. Covers a wide range of academic topics including business, education, social sciences, humanities, science, & engineering. Coverage varies, with some publications going back to 1911.
Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Indexes 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.

To get a list of all the databases available at SCU, go to the library home page and click on the DATABASES tab.

How to Search the Databases

How to Search the Databases:

Just enter keywords describing your topic. Use the connector AND between your keywords or enter keywords in different search boxes. You can also try using different fields from the drop down, for example to indicate a geographical region. For example if you are interested in the history of people immigrating to/from Korea, you could do a search like this:

You can use synonyms or related terms to describe your topics. For example, immigration or migration in the search above.

You can also use an asterisk at the end of a word to retrieve various endings. For example, immigra* will retrieve immigrant, immigrants, and immigration.

Putting an asterisk at the end of korea* will give you korea, koreans, etc. This is useful if you are not using it as a geographical term.

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. If it's not you will have the option of using the Interlibrary Loan Service (ILL). It's free and very fast!