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
Contains articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations on the history of the world (except United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present, and publication dates go from the 19th century to the present.
America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
This database provides articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistoric times to the present, and publication dates go from the late 19th century to the present.

Social Science Databases

ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
This database provides full-text articles and abstracts from scholarly journals from 1871 to present on anthropology, criminology, economics, education, international relations, library science, linguistics, political science, public policy, social work, sociology, and more.
More than 1,800 full-text articles and over 14,000 abstracts from scholarly journals and dissertations in the social sciences
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to journals, books, conference papers, and dissertations on the latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences from 1963 to present.
Political Science Complete This link opens in a new window
This database covers political science topics in depth and has a worldwide focus. It includes scholarly journal articles, books, and 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
A bibliographic database providing indexing and abstracts for disciplines including sociology, history, international relations and humanities. All sources relevant to Women's studies on a global scale. 1972 - present.
GenderWatch This link opens in a new window
This database provides full-text articles on gender and women's studies, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) by authoritative perspectives from 1970 to present.
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
This database contains two collections: 1) A current collection (1990-present) of full- text newspapers, magazines, and journals from ethnic and minority presses. 2) A History collection (1959-1989) of full-text newspapers, magazines and journals, focusing on African American, Hispanic American, and Native American presses.

Multidisciplinary Databases

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to images and the full text of articles in back issues of selected scholarly journals related to the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences.
Consult the online tables of contents for the years available, as coverage varies for each title.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
This multidisciplinary database provides access to over 5,600 active full-text journals and over 6,500 open access journals. Covers topics that range from business, education, social sciences, humanities, engineering, and science. Coverage varies, updates also vary.
Humanities Full Text This link opens in a new window
This database provides brief summaries of, and information on where to find, English-language articles in the most important journals in the humanities, published from 1984 to the present.
The full text of many of the articles is available online from 1995, or later, to the present. For indexing of articles in humanities journals 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, incarcerated or prison in the search above.

You can also use an asterisk at the end of a word to retrieve various endings. For example, educat* will bring back education, educate, etc.

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!