Find Sources - TC 302: Sex & Society - Aiken - 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 (focus of writing assignment 1)	Use library search tools, see recommendations below.
Information from Professional Associations	Start with a specific site or use Google (but be sure to find out more about unfamiliar organizations). These three organizations might be useful for this assignment: - American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) *note, ACOG and AMA publish journals, which might be easier to access via a library search, but they have other materials freely available on their sites. - American Medical Association (AMA) - American Cancer Society
Reports from think tanks and government agencies (might need for OpEd)	Google or on a specific site (like the one for the Brooking Institution). Use recommendations and Google Search Tips below. Make sure to evaluate potential sources.
Journalism/News (Might need for OpEd)	The UT libraries has a subscription to the New York times - use the link on the side bar to activate your subscriptions. Can also use Google or the UT Libraries NexisUni database. Make sure to evaluate unfamiliar publications.

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

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

You will need multiple sets of keywords for each of the claims you're researching in this assignment.

Are pregnancy and birth safe in the United States?

For each main concept, brainstorm a few synonyms and related terms (broader or narrower) that get at that concept:

Key Concepts

Pregnancy/birth

Safety

United states

Related Terms

Labor

Maternal Mortality (includes the safety piece)

Risk

Complication

Death

Texas

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.

Databases and Web Resources for your Class

Library Databases
Web Resources

Scholarly Articles (mostly)

Library search bar - advanced search
Start here - the advanced search version of the library search bar. Use limiters for type of materials, because there are many materials in this search.

Academic Search Complete
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. 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.
SocINDEX with Full Text
Unlimited users.
In addition to full-text journals, SocINDEX with Full Text contains informative abstracts for core coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. Includes indexing for books, monographs, conference papers and other non-periodical content sources.
MEDLINE (EBSCO)
Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. Provides bibliographic indexing from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. Contains bibliographic citations (e.g., authors, title, and journal reference) and author abstracts from 4,500 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 foreign countries.
Journal articles are indexed for MEDLINE using NLM's controlled vocabulary, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Citations are created by the National Library of Medicine, International MEDLARS partners, and cooperating professional organizations.
MEDLINE has worldwide coverage, but 88% of the citations in current MEDLINE are to English-language sources and 76% have English abstracts.

NLM provides free access to MEDLINE through PubMed.

News/Journalism

New York Times Access
As a UT student, you have free unlimited access to the New York Times (including Cooking, Games, and The Athletic) at nyt.com. This access to the NY Times is provided by the UT Libraries. Your access to the NY Times is directly through the site and/or the app, which makes the reading experience easier and more enjoyable.

The New York Times provides invaluable coverage of national and world events, and is often considered the "paper of record." Reading a paper and being an informed citizen makes doing research in every subject easier. Take advantage of this access while you're here at UT!

Nexis Uni
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.

Background and overviews

CQ Researcher
Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Explores a single "hot" issue in the news in depth each week. Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology. Every report is written by an experienced journalist and features comments from experts, lawmakers and citizens on all sides of every issue with numerous charts, graphs and sidebar articles.
Gale eBooks
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. Fully searchable across all files.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide

Search Strategy

Google Search Tips:

Search only a specific site (ex: nih.gov) or domain (ex: .edu or .gov) by typing in your search followed by site:.org, site:.gov (ex: HIV/AIDS prevention site:nih.gov)
Search for an exact phrase by putting your search terms in quotation marks (ex: “over the counter”)

Ask a Librarian

Chat With Us

EID login required

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.