AH 101, Art and Culture in the West to 1400 (Jill Bain): Journal Articles

Your AH 101 research should include journal articles from scholarly journals. How can you find these articles? JSTOR is a good starting place, as well as the search boxes provided on this page. The short video tutorials on the right will give you some searching tips.

• Full List of Relevant Databases
• Off Campus Access Information
• Full Text Finder (how to locate full text for an article or order on interlibrary loan)
• Types of Periodicals (how to tell if an article is from a scholarly source)

1. Start with one or two keywords describing your topic.
2. Use the limiting options within the database to focus (i.e., refine) your results:
   • academic/peer-reviewed journals
   • date of publication (you might want more recent articles for some topics)
3. Look for subjects (aka descriptors) that can help you define your topic more narrowly.
4. Once you determine an angle or perspective you'd like to explore, try adding additional terms to your search.
5. Look for a "full text" link to view the article; if no full text link is available, try "Full Text Finder" to locate a copy of the article.
   • If no copy of the article is available online or in print, you can still request a copy from another library; there is no fee for this service, and articles take about 3 days (often fewer) to arrive.
6. Use the tools within the databases to mark, email, and print your articles:
   • You may be able to email the entire article to yourself, or at least the article information and abstract.
   • You may also be able to send yourself an MLA-formatting reference.
   • Articles in PDF format will have page numbers; articles in HTML format might not.