What is a scholarly article?
Finding Scholarly Articles
To discover what other researchers have said about your topic, look for scholarly articles (secondary sources) in the following databases:
- America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThis 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.
- 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.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowEthnic 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.
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
Searching Tips:
Just enter keywords describing your topic. Use the connector AND between your keywords or enter keywords in different search boxes. For example if you are interested in the evacuation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II you would do a search like this:
-You can use synonyms or related terms to describe your topics. For example, evacuation or incarceration
-You can also use an asterisk at the end of a word to retrieve various endings. For example, Japanese American* would retrieve American and Americans.
When you look at your list of results in the database, If the full-text of an article is not readily available i, 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. It's free and very fast!