Secondary Sources (Articles & Books) - SSI1-118 | Doing Gender - Collins Memorial Library at University of Puget Sound

Searching Databases

Exercise:

BEFORE you begin searching, brainstorm a list of related terms and concepts that describe your topic.
When you construct your search, you'll want to connect synonyms with the Boolean operator "OR" and different concepts with the Boolean operator "AND."
You also can use truncation (the asterisk*) to find all forms and spellings of a word.
Put phrases in quotation marks to ensure that the exact phrase is searched.

Here's an example:

Once you've done a search, use the facets to the left of your results list to limit to
"Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals."

Recommended Databases for This Topic

Academic Search Premier
A multidisciplinary database containing full text journal, magazine & newspaper articles, many from peer-reviewed titles. This scholarly collection covers information in nearly every area of academic study.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender
Primary source material that explores the many facets of LGBTQ history. Users will find page images of a mixture of activist groups’ organizational papers, flyers and pamphlets, NGO and Governmental reports, periodicals, newsletters, personal papers, legal documents and more.
Contemporary Women's Issues: OneFile
Find timely and historically relevant content on issues that influence women’s lives across the globe.
Gender Studies: OneFile
Discover balanced coverage of topics related to gender studies, family and marital issues, and more.
Gender Studies Database
Covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Several thousand links to freely available and indexed full-text articles and documents on the Internet are available. Source documents include professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses & dissertations and other sources.
Google Scholar
Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources including: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, patents, legal opinions and federal & state court opinions.
JSTOR
An interdisciplinary journal archive. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subject areas, ProQuest Central is a large aggregated database of periodical content. It features a diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
PsycINFO
The American Psychological Association's (APA) resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books and dissertations is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health.
Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest)
Provides access to multiple databases covering the international literature in the social sciences, including politics, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology and education.

Finding Full Text Articles

If you have a citation to an article and want to find the full text,use Primo's advanced search. Change the "any field" to title. Type the journal title and the material type to journals.

Journal example:

Tan, Chang. 2012. "Art for/of the Masses." Third Text 26, no. 2: 177-194.

Where's The Fulltext?

There are three methods for obtaining the actual articles you wish to read:

Method 1: In some databases, you will be able to link directly to the fulltext article. Look around, as different databases have different interfaces. Look for a link or buttons that says "Check for Full Text" or Download PDF or similar. If given the choice between a PDF or HTML version of the article, always choose the PDF format. This will give you an exact image, including page numbers, of the article as it appears in the paper journal.

Method 2: If a direct link to full text is not available, then look for a link that checks for fulltext in Primo Search to see if the library subscribes to the journal.

Method 3: Use Interlibrary Loan. See box below.