Find Sources - TC 302: MEXICO CITY AZTEC AND MODERN - Guernsey - LibGuides at University of Texas at Austin

1. Choose a Database

Single articles on a topic are found in our library databases. The UT Libraries pay to have access to these databases and the articles they contain.

You can search in databases that are multidisciplinary or subject-specific.

Multidisciplinary databases contain articles on many topics/from many areas of study. A good place to start for a multidisciplinary search is the main search bar on the library homepage which searches lots of databases or Academic Search Complete.
Subject Specific databases contain articles from specific disciplines like Medicine, English, or Psychology. See your list of suggested databases below.

2. Keywords

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

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

Write down your topic and underline the main concepts (ex. Animals in Aztec Life and Culture)

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

Animals

Aztec

Culture

Related Terms

Pets

Dogs

Eagles

Carnivores

Zoo

Tenochtitlan

Art

Religion

Ritual

Diet

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

3. Recommended Databases

Multidisciplinary

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
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
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
Google Scholar
Unlimited users.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.

Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.

Subject-Specific

Historical Abstracts
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Contains citations and abstracts of worldwide literature (excluding the United States and Canada) from approximately 2,100 journals and (since 1980) books and dissertations on political, diplomatic, economic, social, cultural and intellectual history and related areas of the social sciences and humanities. Covers history dating from 1450 to the present. The database corresponds to the print Historical Abstracts, which was produced by ABC-CLIO.

Dissertations and Theses

You can start to search for dissertations and theses in the library search bar (especially those from UT). This database is another option! If you have a specific item you're looking for, but can't find, please use chat or contact your librarian.

Dissertations and Theses Global
Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. Contains more than 2 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Provides full text for many dissertations and theses, including most done after 1997. All subject areas are covered. The database includes more than 90 percent of the doctoral dissertations accepted each year in North America with selective coverage for other parts of the world. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Only bibliographic citations are available for earlier years. More than 55,000 new citations are added to the database every year. Many dissertations from The University of Texas at Austin are included in the database, though theses from the University are only rarely included.

All Databases
Find all of our databases here - you can filter them by subject.

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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.