Articles via Databases - ENVS 1A - Composing a Sustainable World (Glaser) - Research Guides at Santa Clara University

Databases

Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Provides the full text of literary criticism and reviews, biographies, original works of literature, multimedia resources, and links to selected web resources on authors and their works. Covers 130,000 authors from all times and places. Updated continually.
MLA International Bibliography with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Indexes scholarly research published in journal articles, books, articles in books, and dissertations in the fields of modern languages and their literatures, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film. Includes the full text of more than 1,000 journals in these fields. Also includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals. 1926 - present.

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.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Use Google Scholar to discover scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Some content will be freely available on the web; most will only be accessible by subscription. This restricted link allows current University students, faculty, and staff to access the full text of licensed resources to which the University subscribes. Click on the "Find it @ SCU" links to see if the University has the article through its institutional database and e-journal subscriptions.
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.

SCIENCE / MEDICINE / TECHNOLOGY DATABASES

Engineering Village This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 17 million abstracts from Compendex (1884-present) and approximately 14 million abstracts from Inspec (1896-present).
Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection This link opens in a new window
This multidisciplinary database provides abstracts and references to the literature covering all areas of air, land, water, and noise pollution, as well as bacteriology, ecology, toxicology, risk assessment, environmental engineering, environmental biotechnology, waste management, and water resources. 1981-present. Updated monthly.
General Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts articles at least one column in length from over 200 popular, professional, and scholarly English language periodicals in the sciences, including physical anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, environmental sciences, and more. Fulltext of articles are available from about 75 of these periodicals. Indexing goes back to 1984. Abstracts began in March 1993. Fulltext availability varies title to title, but may go back to 1995. Updated daily.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Limit to Review articles--they are more approachable!

Typing a full question or sentence into Google is probably what you're used to doing--and it works okay. Databases work better when you use single words or short phrases, then narrow by the database functions.
Combining two different words/phrases with AND narrows your search to items that contain both words. e.g.: "oryx and crake" AND politics
Combining two different words/phrases with OR expands your search to items that contain either word--good for synonyms or different forms of the same word. e.g.: "oryx and crake" AND (politics OR political)
- Are you wondering "what are the parentheses for?" Well, I'll tell you! Remember learning about the distributive property in your basic algebra class years ago? The parentheses tell the database to distribute the word(s) on the outside of the parentheses through what's on the inside. So you're telling the database: "I'd like you to search for anything with both the phrase 'oryx and crake' AND politics, as well as anything with the phrase 'portrait of the artist as a young man" AND political. Thanks, database!"