LibGuides: Digital Social Media Production / Kano-Galvan: How to find articles

Brainstorm Your Search

To formulate a search strategy, ask yourself:

What kind of information do I need on my topic?
Who would write about it?
Where would those articles be published?

For example:

What you need:	Who would write it:	Where it would be published:
research findings on treatments of college women with eating disorders	Psychologists, health/medical researchers	Scholarly journals on psychology or health
Personal stories from women who have suffered form eating disorders	Journalists	Popular women's magazines or news magazines

Guide - Scholarly, Popular, or Trade
Use this guide to learn more about popular, scholarly, and trade materials - you might need to know about this to find the right kinds of information for your work.
Guide - Choose a Topic
Use this guide to help you choose a topic - you'll need a relatively focused topic to do good searches for information in the databases.

Searching on the Library Website

Start searching with the big search box on the library homepage.

It searches most but not all the library's resources and will show results across six different categories: Articles & More, Books & Media, Journals, Databases, Research Guides, and the Library Website.

A more targeted place to search is at the link for Articles & More beneath the search bar.

We also encourage you to explore the other databases and journals we offer since Articles & More doesn't show results from all sources.

Choosing a Database

In addition to the general search options above, search in library databases to find more articles related to your topic.

Some databases like Academic Search Complete are multidisciplinary:

Include popular and scholarly articles on all topics
Useful if scholars from multiple disciplines would write about your topic or if you don't know where to start
Great for assignments in UGS and other undergraduate courses where you may only need a few sources

For subject-specific databases, look on the Databases List (use the "All Subjects" dropdown menu) or on the guide for your class or subject on this Guides List.

Include scholarly and specialized articles from a specific discipline
To choose a database, think about what department on campus would have scholars researching your topic, then use the "All Subjects" dropdown menu on the databases page to find that department, or find the guide for that subject (ex. PsycINFO for Psychology topics).

Finding an Article with a Specific Citation

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.

Journals you may be interested in

Databases to try

Academic Search Complete
1990 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated daily. A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals.
Business Source Complete

Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. A scholarly business database providing a collection of bibliographic and full text content in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Indexing and abstracts for scholarly business journals back to 1886 are included.

Searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals. Contains detailed author profiles for the 20,000 most-cited authors in the database.

Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, and SWOT analyses.
Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC)

Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Provides indexing for some 400 periodicals, including full text for over 200 titles, in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association (NCA)), and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Pennsylvania State University). CommSearch offered bibliographic and keyword references to 26 journals in communication studies, with coverage extending to the inaugural issue of each -- some from as far back 1915. It also included cover-to-cover indices of NCA's six journals (from their first editions to the present), and abstracts from their earliest appearance in NCA journals. Mass Media Articles Index provided citation coverage of over 40,000 articles related to mass media and published in over 60 research journals, as well as major journalism reviews, recent encyclopedias, and handbooks in the area of communications studies.