Save a copy of this worksheet to guide your initial research process.

The databases listed below are examples of multidisciplinary finding tools.

Through these databaes you will find scholarly articles, popular magazine articles, newspaper articles, and many other types of materials that have been published in periodicals that come from a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives.

Searching these databases is an excellent way to discover which disciplines have studied your topic, and get a sense of the different perspectives they bring to the topic.

Once you've explored some of these tools you may then want to search a subject specific database to get a more in-depth collection of materials related to your topic that come from that discipline.

Google Scholar can be a powerful search tool, but is has strengths (cited reference searching, breadth of coverage in the social sciences and natural sciences) and weaknesses (inconsistency and inaccuracy, lack of coverage in humanities, etc). 

If your article is not available at Collins Library, you've got an option for getting ahold of it.  Use Tipasa, our interlibrary loan service.

You can go directly to Tipasa and manually enter the information about the article you want, or, if you're using a database, look for a shortcut link to automatically fill out the form.

Allow at least a week for the article to come. Most articles are delivered in electronic format, you'll receive an email with a link to follow as soon as it's arrived.