Find Sources - UGS 302: Who Owns the Past - Covey - LibGuides at University of Texas at Austin

Find Articles on a Topic

For this assignment, you might need several types of sources:

Source Type	Start Here
Scholarly Articles	Library main search bar and databases
Background Information (definitions, short explanations of a topic)	Gale ebooks & other databases on the background information tab Wikipedia - as a jumping off point to other materials
Journalism/News	Google News, specific newspaper websites, or the UT Libraries NexisUni database. Make sure to evaluate unfamiliar publications.
Laws, International agreements, etc.	Google citations you see in scholarly, news sources, or background sources (this is the first option, because finding relevant legislation can be difficult or present an language barrier) specific sites like UNESCO or specific nations' repositories of legislation.

Learn more about databases with the video in the right column.

See search examples on the second tab in this box, "Keywords and Database Searching"

Keyword tool
Use this tool to help you brainstorm keywords on your topic.

Library search bar - advanced search
The advanced search version of the search bar on the library homepage. Use options to limit to books or to scholarly/peer reviewed articles.

Multidisciplinary databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Updated daily. A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Offers a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive to support scholarship and teaching. Includes archives of over 1,000 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. The entire corpus is full-text searchable, offers search term highlighting, includes high-quality images, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.
Members of the public can read online up to three articles for free every two weeks from a large subset of JSTOR journals via the Register & Read program. This program allows remote access. Non-UT students, faculty and staff who need more articles can contact library staff for other access options.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide

Complete list of databases
Sort by type of database (like historical newspapers) or by subject (like Art and Art History) to find more useful databases.

1. Type the title of the article into the large search bar on the library website. You can also search the article title in Articles & More.

2. If you don't see your article, use the Journals search function to search the journal title.

Your results should display the name of the journal along with some links for accessing it.

Select the link that includes the publication date of the issue that was published on the date listed in your article citation.

3. If the correct issue is not displayed, you can submit an interlibrary loan request to obtain a copy of the article from another institution.

Background information provides a general overview of a research topic, including important terms and concepts, relevant names of people or places, and dates of specific events. Finding background information can help you locate keywords for searching databases and identify more specific areas of your topic that you may want to research further.

Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Most current edition. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. Fully searchable across all files. A list of sources included in our subscription is available.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated continually. Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an interface that offers discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
Effective January 1, 2018, Nexis Uni™ replaces LexisNexis Academic.

Google News

Use your keywords in the Articles & More search and use the "law" subject on the left side, use citations you find to get to laws.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
1789 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated daily. Provides indexing of many Congressional publications from 1789 to the present, including Hearings, Committee Prints, Reports, Documents and Congressional Research Service Reports.
House and Senate Reports and Documents indexed in ProQuest Congressional (1817-1969) are available in full text in the Serial Set database. Our subscription to ProQuest Congressional does not include full text of the Serial Set.
Congressional Hearings after 2013 and House and Senate Documents and Reports indexed in ProQuest Congressional (1995 to present) are available in full text on Govinfo.gov site from the Government Printing Office.
Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
US Law
Updated regularly. Contains legislative histories and links to the related full-text Congressional documents of more than 18,000 federal laws enacted since 1929. The fully-searchable PDFs include full text of the public law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and prints. Also included are presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and miscellaneous publications that provide background information related to the making of the law.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Contains news and legal sources
Updated continually. Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an interface that offers discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
Effective January 1, 2018, Nexis Uni™ replaces LexisNexis Academic.

UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee on Restitution of Cultural Property
Law guides from Tarelton Law Library
They have guides for at least the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Mexico.
Oyez
Good source for US Supreme Court cases.

Keyword tool
Use this tool to help you brainstorm keywords on your topic. You search a database differently than Google, so when you search in a database for sources, it is helpful to have your topic broken down into just a few keywords

Searching databases is different than searching in Google. Distil what you're looking for into a few key terms or phrases

should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece

For each main concept, brainstorm a few synonyms and related terms that get at that concept:

The first key concept will likely be in common for everyone on this topic, but the second and third will be different, background information can help with determining what to search for.

Key Concepts

Elgin Marbles

Greece

Great Britain

Related Terms

Parthenon Frieze

Parthenon sculptures

Antiquities

stolen antiquities

Acropolis Museum

repatriation

British Museum

Combine key terms using AND and OR:
- AND narrows your search by looking for articles with all of the words (your two or three key concepts should be connected with AND, because you need all of them represented in useful articles).
- OR broadens your search by looking for articles with any of the words (synonyms and related terms should be separated by OR - they get at the same key concepts, so any of them are useful).
Try different combinations of your keywords to get better results as you search:

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What are databases?

This video, from RMIT University, explains what a database is...

Where's the Article?

If you don’t see a .pdf of the article you want, click FIND IT AT UT to find it in another database or in print in the Libraries.

If it is only in print in the Libraries or we don’t own the article, click GET A SCAN to have the article emailed to you. This option will take a few days.