LibGuides: LAR101: Taking a Stance: Find Articles

Databases

ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Find periodical and newspaper articles in all major subject areas, including Business, Social Sciences, Education, Science and Technology, as well as the Humanities and Fine Arts.
Social Science Database This link opens in a new window
Search for academic journal articles across a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work and sociology.
Criminology Collection This link opens in a new window
Supports research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as law enforcement and security services. Includes the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Abstracts Database, plus indexing and full-text coverage of scholarly journals.
Political Science Database This link opens in a new window
Political Science Database gives users access to hundreds of leading political science, public policy, and international relations journals. It also includes thousands of recent full-text doctoral dissertations on political science topics, together with working papers, conference proceedings, country reports, policy papers and other sources.

How should I search in a database?

When you search in a database, you need to break your question or topic down into key words. How you put those words together also matters. What the video below for a quick intro to Boolean operators and building effective search strings.

Also check out this search strategy builder from Arizona State University to help you put your keywords together into logical combinations.

Video Length: 1:28

Used with permission from the Ronald Williams Library at Northeastern Illinois University.

Search Strategy Builder

Try the search strategy builder to see how to combine your keywords. This tool is not a database and will not run a search, but you can copy and paste the results into a database to run a search.

Concept 1

and

Concept 2

and

Concept 3

Name your concepts here

Search terms

List alternate terms for each concept.

These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept.

Use single words, or "short phrases" in quotes

or

or

or

or