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HST 316/WMS 316: Women and Gender in Medieval Europe

A libguide that focuses on the experiences of women in pre-modern Europe.

About This Page

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. 

Using JStor

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.

Using Databases

Using a licensed database rather than a regular search engine searches for articles in respected journals rather than miscellaneous stuff on the internet.

Our library subscribes to many databases that provide citations, abstracts, and sometimes links to full-text articles, the following are some of the ones you may want to check:

  • I recommend using the advanced search option, and if the database supplies subject headings, use those to narrow down the content that is available for your subject
  • You may wish to limit your search in these databases to articles in peer-reviewed journals.
  • Some of the databases include little or no full text, however, the article may be available in electronic format or in paper. Check our Journal Locator to see if we have a copy of the journal in the library.
  • If we don't have it, you can request it through interlibrary loan. Please fill out the interlibrary loan form. A link to the article will article will be sent to your email address.

Librarian

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Sonia Pacheco
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Contact:
spacheco@umassd.edu

Claire T. Carney Library
Room 237
285 Old Westport Road
Dartmouth, MA 02747
508-999-8695