LibGuides: UGS 302: ACEs and the Power of Connection / Hermosura: Databases to search

Want some basic knowledge about your topic?

Many people skip this step, but it can save you a lot of time in the long run. Fully three-quarters of my questions come from folks who haven't done some background information searching to discover:

1) Who cares or is affected by the topic? (what kinds of experts study this? What populations are impacted? Who is coming up with solutions?)

2) What are the controversies surrounding my topic? (what are people arguing about?)

3) What kinds of things do people measure when talking about impacts? (instead of using words like 'effects' or 'impacts', which are vague, use specific measurables: 'graduation rates', 'recidivism', 'asthma')

SAGE Knowledge This link opens in a new window
Broad overviews focused heavily in the social sciences (education, psych, sociology, communication studies and more).
Platform for Sage book and reference content, including scholarly monographs, reference works, handbooks, series, professional development titles, and more. Only select book titles purchased by the UT Libraries are fully accessible.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window
I use this database when I want to understand the research methodologies authors use in their studies.
A research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. Contains content from over 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks, the entire “Little Green Book,” and ""Little Blue Book” series, two Major Works collating a selection of journal articles, and specially commissioned videos. Researchers can explore methods and concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. Since Sage Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more.
For Tips and Tutorials, please see the Sage Research Methods Tutorials page and the Sage Research Methods LibGuide.

Databases I recommend

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Usually my first stop for a multidisciplinary perspective.
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.
PsycINFO (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
Limits you to literature in psychology
Updated monthly. Indexes and abstracts over 1,700 sources, including international material selected from periodicals written in over 35 languages. Contains current chapter and book coverage with worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present, and adds over 60,000 references annually through monthly updates. Covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines.
Has over 1.8 million individual records, some dating back to 1887, and includes abstracts from Psychological Abstracts back to 1927, Psychological Bulletin from 1921-1926, and all APA journals and the American Journal of Psychology back to their first issues. Corresponds in part to the print index Psychological Abstracts.
Education Source This link opens in a new window
Limits you to literature in education.
The collection includes full text for more than 1,700 journals, 550 books and monographs, education-related conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education from early childhood to higher education and also includes educational specialties such as multilingual education, health education and testing.

What about aggregator searches?

I don't have strong feelings about using an aggregator over a more narrow database search. Typically, I do both. I do find, however, that the below aggregator searches are more complicated than the databases I have listed at left.

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Use this link, especially if you are off campus, to ensure you are navigating the tool as an authenticated user.
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.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.

Library 'all in one' search
This is the search bar on our homepage - perform a search and then find the advanced search on the results page.