Article Databases mostly contain articles from periodicals, including:
Journal Articles cover research and practice in a particular field or discipline. Experts in the field write these articles, and they are high-quality sources. Limit your search to just journal articles by checking the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals option.
Magazine and newspaper articles are written more for the general public. They're not as high quality as journal articles and don't go through a rigorous peer review, but they may still be appropriate depending on your topic. Use the Source Evaluation Rubric under the Evaluating Sources tab to evaluate these types of articles.
Some databases, especially those geared to a particular topic, such as the Literary Reference Center, contain periodical articles as well as articles from reference books.
Starting Your Research
If your research assignment requires you to write about a current social or controversial issue, the following database is a good place to start.
Viewpoints on all sides of controversial issues
The most frequently-used databases
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)
Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than…
full-text, aggregated content covers every major subject from the world's best publishers of reference
Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context)
Opposing Viewpoints is the premier online resource covering today's hottest social issues, from capital punishment to immigration to…
Very Short Introductions Online
Multidisciplinary collection of nearly 700 titles that introduce topics in an accessible way.
If your research assignment requires you to write about literary criticism or literary themes, the following databases are a good place to start.
Single search that brings together all the content in Literature Resource Center, Literature Criticism Online, LitFinder, and select books from GVRL.
A good starting point specifically for literary criticism. A searchable database of the Gale series of literature reference e-books.
A good starting point for any literary assignment. Access criticism, biographies, topic overviews and more.
Scholarly articles. Use your Boolean Operators (AND, OR) for best searching.
LitFinder is international in scope, covers all time periods, and contains literature content, including poems, short stories, novels, essays, speeches, plays, biographies, summaries, photographs, and more. Full-text is available in many cases. LitFinder provides access to a wealth of literary works and secondary-source materials covering world literature and authors throughout history, including full-text poems and poetry citations, short stories, inaugural presidential speeches, and plays. LitFinder also contains biographies, work summaries, photographs, and a glossary. Researchers can quickly search for a particular author or identify authors linked by qualities such as gender, nationality, century, and genre using person search. Works search functions similarly, giving users the ability to browse works by thousands of subjects, themes, genres, and literary movements.