Online databases are invaluable resources for researchers.  They make discovering and locating relevant scholarly material extremely efficient.  At the same time, it is important to understand that there are different kinds of databases, and scholars need to be able to distinguish between these different types and to select the appropriate databases for their research needs.  Here are some brief overviews of different types of databases.

Subject databases cover a specific discipline or sub-discipline or a specific interdisciplinary area.  For example, America: History and Life indexes scholarly materials covering all aspects of United States and Canadian history, from prehistoric times to the present. Subject databases will help you access the most in-depth range of materials and typically should be your first choice.

Interdisciplinary databases, cover a wide range of disciplines, and often index resources from scholarly and popular sources.  Academic Search Premier and ProQuest Central are examples of interdisciplinary databases.  While convenient, these databases can provide an overwhelming number of results, and you'll need to be mindful of the lens or disciplines that information you find is coming from.

If your article is not available at Collins Library, you've got another option for getting a hold of it. Use our Interlibrary Loan service.

Go directly to Interlibrary Loan and manually enter the information about the article you're requesting, or, if you're using a database, look for a link to request the article which will automatically fill out the request form for you.

Allow at least a week for the article to come, although often they come more quickly than that. You'll receive an email with a link to follow as soon as it's arrived.

Always use the advanced search interface and some combination of the following techniques to increase the effectiveness of your searches: