Find Sources for your Research - UGS 303: Survive and Thrive - LGBTQ+ @ UT/Prof. Cvetkovich - LibGuides at University of Texas at Austin

Step 1: Brainstorm Search Terms (Keywords)

Library databases and Google can't be searched the same way so take a few moments to come up with a search strategy before diving into a database.

Step 1: Think about the key concepts of your topic and search those instead of an entire phrases or sentences.

Step 2: Think of other terms you could use that are synonyms or related (they could be a broader or narrower aspect). This often requires that you do a little background research to learn more.

Step 3: Connect your terms using AND and OR:

Remember -

AND narrows your topic (use AND between terms if you want them all to appear in your results)
OR broadens your topic (use OR between terms if you want any, not all, to appear in your results)

Generate Keywords from a Topic
This tool can help you create search terms and formulate an effective search.

Step 2: Pick a Tool and Find Sources

QueerBio.com
Biographies of over 20,000 contemporary and historical figures who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, or gender fluid.

glbtq.com Archives This link opens in a new window
An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, & queer culture (glbtq). Stopped updating in 2015.
glbtq.com, which housed the world's largest encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, closed on August 1, 2015. Most of the encyclopedia's entries, essays, and interviews have been archived online.
An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, & queer culture (glbtq). Contains over 900 entries and includes photographs and illustrations. Covers a wide array of historical figures and subjects such as art, literature, history, pop culture, sports and film. Articles were written/edited by scholars in the field of gender studies.
Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Articles from hundreds of encyclopedias across topics
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
Grove Music Online This link opens in a new window
Online music encyclopedia
Updated frequently, Grove Music Online is the world’s premier online music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship.

Libraries Search Box
Search across many of the Libraries electronic and print resources at once. Includes articles, books, ebooks and more.

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Search for scholarly articles using a Google search. Use this link or the one on the Libraries home page to get past paywalls using your EID.
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.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Scholarly and non-scholarly articles on all topics
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.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Local, state, and national newspapers
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.
LGBTQ+ Life This link opens in a new window
Find scholarly sources related to LGBTQ+ Studies
This comprehensive database is the definitive index to the world's literature regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. LGBT Life contains indexing and abstracts for more than 250 LGBT-specific core periodicals as well as periodicals in Women’s and Gender Studies. It also contains more than 350 books and reference works.
LGBT Life provides comprehensive coverage of traditional academic, cultural, lifestyle and regional publications, including The Advocate, Lesbian News and Bay Windows. LGBT Life also provides indexing and abstracts for the full run of many historically significant titles such as ONE, The Ladder, Mattachine Review, Christopher Street and Body Politic. In addition, LGBT Life includes other source types such as monographs, reference books, newsletters, case studies and speeches. It also provides relevant bibliographic data from NISC's Sexual Diversity Studies.
MLA International Bibliography
Literary studies, theatre
Updated ten times per year. Indexes critical materials on literature, criticism, drama, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Provides access to citations from over 4,400 journals, series, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Produced by the Modern Language Association.
International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Theatre and dance
Updated regularly. Contains full text for more than 100 journal titles and citations for more than 60,000 journal articles, books, book articles and dissertation abstracts on all aspects of theatre and performance in 126 countries. Includes all of the content available in the 14 volume print International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance, published by the Theatre Research Data Center (TRDC) at Brooklyn College.
Music Index This link opens in a new window
Music studies
Updated quarterly. Contains records describing articles in over 640 international periodicals in the field of music and related disciplines. Includes book reviews, recording and performance reviews, and obituaries.
ARTbibliographies Modern This link opens in a new window
Contemporary art - includes articles back to 1974
Updated six times a year. Provides abstracts of the current literature of modern art, photography and design. Covers all aspects of modern and contemporary art, including performance art and installation works, video art, computer and electronic art, body art, graffiti, artists' books, theater arts, crafts, jewelry and illustration, as well as the traditional fine arts of painting, printmaking, sculpture, and drawing. The database corresponds to the print ARTbibliographies Modern.
To find information about an artist, try browse indexes then select the subject/artist index.
Bibliography of the History of Art This link opens in a new window
Art and Art History - includes articles through 2007
Updated quarterly. Covers European and American art from late antiquity to the present and contemporary art worldwide. Indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealer's catalogs, and articles from more than 2,500 periodicals. Bibliography of the History of Art includes and extends the coverage of its two predecessor art indexes: RAA (Repertoire d'Art et d'Archeologie) and RILA (International Repertory of the Literature of Art).

Austin American Statesman in Newspaper Source Plus database
Find the Austin American Statesman to 2019. The Statesman is our major daily here in Austin and covers Central Texas, including political reporting.
- Note: Not all articles through are avaiable full text. For articles after 2019, search the Statesman website - not everything is paywalled.
- Search tip include Austin American-Statesman in a search box and change the drop down to SO Journal name
Austin Chronicle
This is our city's free weekly. It very apparently skews to the left of the political spectrum, but is a valuable resource for local issues.
TIP: From the menu, click on More and then Archives to search past issues
The Austin Villager
Free weekly newspaper serving the black community. Search or click on Archives and browse issues.
Community Impact
This paper comes to many homes for free and has a surprising amount of coverage and data for local issues. Choose your location for very specific content. Covers Austin, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth metro areas.
Daily Texan Archive
Seach older issues of the Daily Texan here, as well as searching their website for newer articles.
Google Custom Search: Austin Local Information
News, statistics, law/crime, and more
Texas Observer
Texas nonprofit news source.
Texas Tribune
Nonprofit news source inTexas

Where is 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.

Scholarly Journal Articles

Peer Review

You may be asked to look for peer-reviewed, research, scholarly, referred or academic articles - all names for the same type of source. What are they? These articles go through the peer-review process before they are published. A scholar/researcher/professor submits their article to a journal and it is sent to other experts in the field (peers) to ensure that they contain high-quality, original research important to the field. This is a measure of quality control other types of articles don't go through.

If you can't tell whether or not a journal is peer-reviewed, check Ulrichsweb.

access the database
type in the title of the journal
peer-reviewed journals will have a referee jersey ("refereed" is another term for "peer-reviewed") - example below