Find Sources - UGS 303: DD Students, Policy, and Action - Vohra-Gupta - LibGuides at University of Texas at Austin

Find Articles on a Topic

Choose a place to search
Keywords for searching a database

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

Source Type	Start Here
Scholarly Articles	Recommended library databases below - these databases will contain other types of materials, but are the best place to find scholarly articles. Multidisciplinary databases will include articles from across disciplines. Subject-specific databases will contain material focused in an area of study.
Reports from think tanks and government agencies	Google or on a specific site (like the one for the Brooking Institution). Use recommendations and Google Search Tips on the web resources tab below. Make sure to evaluate potential sources.
Journalism/News	Google or the UT Libraries NexisUni database. Make sure to evaluate unfamiliar publications.
Legislation	Start with the web resources tab for information on finding Texas or US laws

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.

Is the academic achievement of immigrant students impacted by national policy debates on immigration?)

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

Key Concepts

immigrant students

academic achievement

policy debates

Related Terms

undocumented students (more specific)

immigrants

learning

academic performance

achievement (more general)

success

academic success

public debate

policy ideas

policy proposals

attitudes (more general/related)

negative attitudes

positive attitudes

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

Find scholarly articles in multidisciplinary databases

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.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
1865 - 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. 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.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide

Find scholarly articles in subject-specific databases

SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
1895 - present. Unlimited.
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.
America: History and Life This link opens in a new window
1964 - present. Unlimited users.

Updated regularly. Contains citations with abstracts to social science and humanities literature on all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture and current affairs from prehistoric times to the present. Covers books, book reviews, journals and dissertations. Also reviews films and video projects. The database corresponds to the print America: History and Life, which is produced by ABC-CLIO. The database covers history, interdisciplinary studies of historical interest and history-related topics in the social sciences and humanities.
ERIC: Education Resources Information Center This link opens in a new window
1966 (selected full text from 1993) - present. Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. Provides a digital library of education-related resources. Contains over 1.1 million citations covering research documents, journal articles, technical reports, program descriptions and evaluations, and curricular materials in the field of education.

Also includes more than 107,000 full text non-journal documents indexed by the ERIC database. Approximately one-half of the entries in the ERIC database are to ERIC documents. Microfiche copies of ERIC documents, including those prior to 1996, are in the Collections Deposit Library (CDL) Microforms Collection at MCFICHE 4913.

News/Journalism

Daily Texan This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies. Unlimited.
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.

Statistics

Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista provides statistical data from thousands of institutions and sources. It provides access to data from market and opinion research institutions, as well as from business organizations and government agencies.
Statista provides statistical data from thousands of institutions and sources. It provides access to data from market and opinion research institutions, as well as from business organizations and government agencies.
Statista includes data on more than 85,000 topics from 18,000 sources. About 20 percent of the total data in Statista comes from sources available free online, such as the World Bank and the U.S. Census, but the data also includes numerous exclusive sources which include industry, marketing, and trade groups. Much of the data is related to marketing, demographic, government and industry information, and is international in scope. Data can be downloaded in JPG, PowerPoint and Excel.
While historical and time series data are not a focus of Statista, the metadata about each table provides all the necessary information to go to the table’s source, where historical information may be available.
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
1790 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Provides easy access to historical census data for the United States. Allows users to visually analyze and understand the demography of any part of the United States with access to the following:
- Interactive thematic maps of historical census data
- Customized reports for any chosen area or areas (including aggregates)
- Complete coverage of the United States, down to neighborhoods and streets
- Simple navigation buttons and a find tool make it easy and efficient to study neighborhoods
Users can examine geographic areas while selecting the type of data to be shown, such as population density or income level. The corresponding data tables are also available.

Laws

Guide to finding US Laws - Government documents and Information Guide
Texas Legislature Online
Track bills, identify legislators, see voting records, and more.

University Policies

UT University Policy Office

Useful government agencies

Congressional Research Service
Reports from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service are meant to inform legislation/policy.

Think tanks

News

Google News

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”)

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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.

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