LibGuides: Rhetoric 306/309: Find Sources

Find Sources

Many library databases provide well organized and high selective coverage of scholarly journal articles.

Try the following databases:

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary, includes a mix of scholarly articles, popular magazines and newspapers articles.
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
Multidisciplinary. Has a tricky search, so be prepared for a lot of results.
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

Search Tips

When searching multidisciplinary databases, check for an option to limit your search to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles.
Differentiate scholarly articles from popular magazine articles, trade publications

Opinions, editorials and viewpoint articles can be found in multidisciplinary databases, newspapers, magazines and on the web.

Try these:

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Searches local, state, national and international 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.
Chronicle of Higher Education This link opens in a new window
A source of news, information for higher education community.
Updated weekly. Provides news and information services of interest to faculty, administrators and students in the field of higher education. The full text of the current issue is available every Monday morning, following the Friday print publication. The current issue and the archive are both fully searchable, and the site also features an archive of more than 12 years of The Chronicle.
Daily Texan This link opens in a new window
This covers until 2019. More recent issues on the Daily Texan website.

Data is the raw information from which statistics are created. It usually comes in the form of a digital data set that can be analyzed using software such as Excel.
Statistics provide an interpretation and summary of data.They usually come in the form of a table or chart.
The largest collector of data and statistics and the largest funding source for the collection of data and stats is the US Government.

What appears below is a start and should be used to inspire you to search for datasets/statistics relevant to your topic. Please ask a librarian if you need search help.

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.

Scholarly or Popular?

Scholarly articles are written by researchers or experts in a particular field. They use specialized vocabulary, have extensive citations, and are often peer-reviewed.
Popular magazine articles are typically written by journalists to entertain or inform a general audience,

Viewpoint or Informational?

Distinguishing between facts/information and viewpoints/opinions is a skill. Keep the following in mind:

A journalist observes, gathers, assesses and presents news and information. They are also called reporters. Journalists are trained to be fair and impartial - they keep their opinions out of the story.
A columnist or a critic works to persuade to convince you of a viewpoint based upon their expertise or experience.