Our library subscribes to many databases that provide citations, abstracts, and sometimes links to full-text articles. This page identifies useful databases to which the library subscribes.
JSTOR stands for Journal Storage. It is an electronic archive of older issues of some important academic journals. Some faculty members like to search it by topic because of the convenience of the full text.
I do not recommend searching JSTOR by subject unless you are looking for a very specific unusual word or phrase you can find no where else! Why:
1. Nothing in JSTOR is current. It is journal storage. There is a delay of at least three--and usually five--years between journal publication and inclusion in JSTOR.
2. It is a key word only search. There is no subject searching. If you search for your word or phrase in the title and the author used another word or phrase, the article will not appear.
3. Searches yield too many hits, many of them irrelevant. Do you really want to look through 600 or more articles for a few useful ones? Scholars can go through large searches and identify the few relevant articles relatively quickly because they are already very familiar with the subject. Students cannot.
Use a more specific database to identify articles. Use the Journal Locator to determine if we own the article: the Journal Locator includes the journals in JSTOR.
Our library subscribes to many databases that provide citations, abstracts, and sometimes links to full-text articles. If you choose a subject in anywhere other than the United States or Canada, use Historical Abstracts. For the history of the United States and Canada use America: History and Life. You may also wish to search SocIndex, which provides selected coverage of the social sciences, including history and sociology and includes some full-text articles. It also includes some citations to government documents, books, and chapters in books.
Anthropological articles tend to be more structural and theoretical than history, but you may wish to check the anthropology databases: Anthrosource includes full-text articles from a small number of journals; Anthropological Literature provides comprehensive coverage of the literature but does not include full text.
You may wish to limit your search in these databases to articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Most of these databases include little or no full text within the databases. But the article may be available in electronic format or in paper. Use Find Journals by Title.
If we don't have it, you can request it through interlibrary loan. Please fill out the interlibrary loan form.
This is a library tutorial on understanding citations found in searches of online databases and bibliographies.
Tutorial: Reading Citations in an Online Database
Self Assessment: Reading Citations
