Find Sources - UGS 302 - Ordinary Life and Landscapes: A History of the U.S. Built Environment - Lopez - LibGuides at University of Texas at Austin

Find Articles on a Topic

Choose a place to search
Keywords for searching a database

Source Type	Start Here
Scholarly Articles	Library Databases, see recommendations below
Books	See find books page or start searches on the library homepage
Historical Newspapers	Library Databases, see recommendations below, and know that The Daily Texan is the most user-friendly.
Maps	Sanborn Maps USGS (United States Geological Survey Maps)
Other primary sources for this class	Portal to Texas History

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

Searching databases is different than searching Google. Distil what you're looking for into a few key terms or phrases, rather than whole sentences.

Is the academic achievement of immigrant students impacted by national policy debates on immigration?)

For each main concept, brainstorm a few synonyms and related terms (broader or narrower) that get at that concept:

Key Concepts

immigrant students

academic achievement

policy debates

Related Terms

undocumented students (more specific)

immigrants

learning

academic performance

achievement (more general)

success

academic success

public debate

policy ideas

policy proposals

attitudes (more general/related)

negative attitudes

positive attitudes

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.

What is peer review?

Peer review is a process scholarly articles go through before they are published.

Scholarly articles are 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 information doesn'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

Recommended Databases and Web Resources

Multidisciplinary

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. 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.
Members of the public can read online up to three articles for free every two weeks from a large subset of JSTOR journals via the Register & Read program. This program allows remote access. Non-UT students, faculty and staff who need more articles can contact library staff for other access options.

For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Project MUSE Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. 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.
Ebooks: Selected ebook 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, and titles are accessible on some mobile devices. For further information, please consult the FAQ or tutorials and user guides
.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
1990 - present. 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.

Subject-Specific - Architecture

Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals This link opens in a new window
1934 (with selective coverage back to 1741) - current. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Indexes more than 2,000 periodicals published worldwide on architecture and design, archaeology, city planning, interior design, and historic preservation. Avery indexes not only the international scholarly and popular periodical literature, but also the publications of professional associations, U.S. state and regional periodicals, and the major serial publications on architecture and design of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Includes obituary citations.

Daily Texan - Newspaper Archive This link opens in a new window
1900 - 2019. Unlimited.*Available on campus only*
Digitized copies and content of the Daily Texan.
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
1690 - 1990s. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Includes more than 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and the 1990s, including titles from all 50 states. Search by dates/eras, article types (news & opinion, election returns, letters, poetry/songs, legislative, prices, advertisements, matrimony & death notices), region/state, and newspaper name.
New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
1851 - 2018. Unlimited users.
Updated annually. Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements.
More recent years are also available in other full text resources.
Austin American Statesman (Historical) This link opens in a new window
1871 - 1980. Unlimited users.
Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. As the leading newspaper in the capital of Texas, the Historical Austin American Statesman provides researchers with unique insights into the political, economic, cultural, and social life of this important state, as well as the southwest U.S. from the late 19th through the 20th century. The paper has strong central Texas coverage, especially for political reporting.
More recent issues are available in LexisNexis Academic, Factiva and Library PressDisplay.

Finding Primary Sources Guide
Includes historical newspapers

Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970 This link opens in a new window
1867 - 1970. Unlimited users.
A collection of large-scale, detailed maps from 1867-1970 depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of more than 12,000 U.S. towns and cities.
The available states on our site are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Access to this resource is funded by the Littlefield Fund for Southern History.

USGS Maps (United States Geological Survey)

Portal to Texas History

Handbook of Texas Online This link opens in a new window
This source is useful for finding background information on urban areas, buildings, architects, designers, investors, and namesakes of buildings. Take note of the primary sources cited in the bibliography for each entry and search for them in the Portal to Texas History linked above.
Updated perodically. A multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association and the University of Texas Libraries.

Librarian

Sarah Brandt

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Subjects: Undergraduate Studies

Librarian

Sarah Brandt

she/her

Email Me

Subjects: Undergraduate Studies

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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.