Scholarly sources are written by researchers or experts in a particular field. They use specialized vocabulary, have extensive citations, and are often peer-reviewed. As opposed to non-scholarly/popular sources like newspaper articles, blogs or websites.
To find scholarly articles, search through the recommended databases below. If you aren't finding many results, try searching for all full-text articles available through UT Libraries through the library catalog. After you search using keywords, select "Peer-reviewed journals" on the left-hand side of the results page to display peer-reviewed articles.
Also, consider consulting scholarly books. These types of scholarly sources are written for scholars/researchers in the author's field. To determine if it is scholarly, look for extensive citations, expert authors, and well-respected publishers (ex. a university press, government publication, or major publisher of academic books). For more info on how to generally find print books and ebooks in the library catalog, see the "Find Books" section below.
Start searching with the big search box on the library homepage.
A more targeted place to search is at the link for Articles & More beneath the search bar.
On the left toolbar in an Articles & More search, check these boxes for credible & relevant results:
If you want to narrow even more, try these options to filter:
Keep an eye on the number of your search results. Start browsing when you feel you have a manageable number of results to skim through.
Unlimited users.
Covers United States and Canadian history and culture from prehistory to present, and includes indexing of over 1800 scholarly journals and magazines.
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.
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
Unlimited users.
Journals: Updated as issues are published. Project MUSE is a leading provider of humanities and social science content for the scholarly community, with complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals from leading university presses and scholarly societies.
Books: Selected titles from university presses and scholarly societies. All content from the print edition of the book is included in the digital edition. There are no DRM restrictions.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Unlimited users.
Includes more than 49,500 bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Includes more than 80 full text journals and books about Texas history, ethnic & cultural diversity, gender studies, literature, public health, business as well as home & garden and sports & leisure. The database contains biographies portraying famous historical and contemporary Texans. Also available in the Texas Reference Center is the Spanish-language newspaper El Sol de Texas with Texas and national news coverage.
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.
Unlimited users.
Updated quarterly. Brings together into one searchable resource Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and Anthropological Index from Royal Anthropological Institute in the UK. Provides worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies. Offers coverage of all core periodicals in the field in addition to local and lesser-known journals.
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Bibliography of Native North Americans (BNNA) is a bibliographic database covering all aspects of native North American culture, history, and life. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, multicultural relations, gaming, governance, legend, and literacy. BNNA contains more than 80,000 citations for books, essays, journal articles, and government documents of the United States and Canada. Dates of coverage for included content range from the sixteenth century to the present.
Unlimited users.
Updated quarterly. Contains records for all types of material on Mexican-American topics and Chicanos. Since 1992, the Chicano Database covers material on the broader Latino experience, including Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants.
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.
From the UT Libraries' homepage, type the book title or keyword you are searching for in the search box. You'll find results across many different library resources.
When your results load, select "Library Catalog" from the dropdown arrow to narrow your results to include books and media
After searching, you need to look for four details:
1. Is this book in print or is it electronic (an ebook that you can access online)?
2. If the book you want is a physical book, log into your account and look for the pick it up button.
3. Is the book AVAILABLE? If not, there will be a due date. Click the Pick it Up Button to request it and select the library location where you'd like to pick it up. Keep in mind that if there is a due date, it will take several days for the current borrower to return it. Wait for an email telling you your books are ready before you come get them!
4. Are you ready to check out? Either get the book off the shelf yourself, or click the Pick it Up button and a library staff member will get the book and bring it to the library location you selected to pick it up. Wait for an email telling you your books are ready before you come get them! It will take 1-2 business days.
All you need is your UT ID!
Not all of our books are available online as ebooks. Here is how to limit your search to only books available online.
Remember that your keyword strategy will need to be broader because books cover broader topics than do articles.
These screenshots (you can open them in a new tab to enlarge) lead you from www.lib.utexas.edu
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Yes! If you would like to get a hold of a book that has been checked out, you can request the book. The library will then change the due date so that the current borrower has to return it earlier. To request a book, go to the library catalog, click the pick it up button, log in with your UT EID, and then request the book. You can learn more about this feature here.
Pick it up?
Pick it up is a service that allows you to request your book to be retrieved from the shelf and be delivered to the UT library of your choice. It will take an estimated 3-5 days for your book to be retrieved. You can learn more about it here.
If you need more options to search, you can click on the Books & Media option on the Libraries home page and choose Advanced Search.
LIB USE ONLY means library use only. When a book has this label under its current status, you can only access and read the book at its library location.
You can renew it! You can renew your book at any library location or online, through My Account. To access your account, click on My Accounts, located on the upper right-hand corner of the screen on the library home page.
If the UT Libraries doesn't have a book you need, you can request it through InterLibrary Loan. The service is free and unlimited. Click on the link below to create an account and request a loan.
To request a scan of a scholarly article, newspaper article or book chapter, use our 
service to have a PDF scan emailed to you within 1-3 business days.
How much is it? It's free!
How many times can you do this? There is no limit to the number of individual requests you can make. However, you can only request up to 3 chapters from one book.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.