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Asian Studies

What's a secondary source?

In secondary sources, authors analyze and interpret primary source materials. 

Secondary sources can be scholarly or popular.  Scholarly sources (sometimes called "academic" or "peer-reviewed" sources) are written by and for experts and typically include bibliographies and citations.  Popular sources are written for a general, non-expert audience and can be authored by anyone.

The Library of Congress Free electronic resources

Recommended Subject Database for Asian Studies

From the Association for Asian Studies the database contains  records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.  The BAS includes citations to Western-language periodical articles, monographs, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings and anthologies.

Europa World Plus

The online version of the Europa World Year Book and the Europa Regional Surveys of the World series. The Yearbook covers political and economic information for more than 250 countries and territories, while the Surveys provide in-depth, expert analysis at the regional, sub-regional and country level.

Search Historical Abstracts

Historical Abstracts covers all aspects of world history from 1450 to the present.  Use this database to find articles, essays and books on Asian history.

Historical Abstracts
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Interdisciplinary Databases (The Big Ones)

Featured Journals

E-Journal Collections

These e-journal collections provide access to many journals in the field of Asian Studies, but they are limited in scope and coverage compared to subject databases.  In most cases, it's better to search subject databases to identify articles, and then use Primo Search to access the materials in these e-journal collections.

Search Primo

Search Collins+Summit+Articles

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.