Why use articles for research?
Broad-to-narrow search strategy: For news or research articles, start with multi-disciplinary databases and move on to subject specific databases.
Part of my research topic on Within our Gates has led me to an interest in what Sylvia experiences as she attempts to generate school funding for her school in the South during the Reconstruction era. And what research is being done today?
Open JSTOR for historical academic articles. Start with the key phrase reconstruction era.
1. Reconstruction era = 96,000+
2. Add school= 20,000
3. Add funding= 5000+
4. Limit to Journals = 3400
While JSTOR has deep historical content, it can also contain fairly recent work that is five years old and older.
Nearly all of our other databases will contain more current research. The Ebsco databases allows users to search several databases simultaneously by accessing Academic Search Ultimate --Choose databases--> checkmark all:
A search for public schools, funding inequity, and race produces research studies like this one:
Library databases:
A-Z list and by subject
Your topic may concern subject areas such as education, health, history, etc. You may consider searching within databases that contain articles that were published in subject-specific journals.
As you review bibliographies, reviews of literature, and reference lists, you will discover additional sources to possibly use. In this case, you have a citation, but you need the article itself. Does our library have it?
Your citation:
Step one: search the journal title in WorldCat Discovery.
Step two: limit to journals in the facets on the left side of your results screen.
Step three: if we have the journal, it displays as SU Libraries Owns. Click into the record to see either electronic or print holdings.