Freshman Writing: Library Research: Electronic Resources: Articles

While new books are always being published, for purposes of the freshman composition research paper, they would be generally considered background sources. When you want the most recent information, you will head for the Library's Electronic Resources page. Search in a variety of ways:

• our Recommended Databases list
• browse through the Subject Databases
• look at the complete list of available databases, alphabetically [which also includes an Information link, briefly explaining features of each database]
• search for a SPECIFIC magazine/journal/newspaper title
• search for groups of magazines/journals/newspapers by Subject

The ISU Library has no print indexes for recent searching, but we still maintain about 1,500 PRINT subscriptions. Using the "Check availability" links in the databases may lead you to an online catalog search rather than a link to the full-text of an article. The articles may be in Current Periodicals (1st floor, adjacent to PRINT Reference books) or, if older [usually >1-2 years], you'll find them, by call number order, in the Library's basement.

While databases used to be good for searching the last 5-10 years, increasingly many of them go much farther back. Some databases, in particular JSTOR, actually have digitized journal holdings from volume 1 to sometime in the recent past. However, if you do need to research older material, you may find it necessary to use the good old Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, covering primarily magazine-level article from 1900-2000, located at Reference AI 3 .R48.

Many databases were originally printed indexes but some were created after the move to electronic resources. Many are produced by the same vendor/aggregator, so a new database may look familiar to you. All databases are designed to allow for a wide spectrum of searching expertise from basic to advanced. All allow you to search by keyword/phrase, author, subject, article title. Most organize the citation information by fields, and you can then limit by field. All allow you to define your search parameters by date. All have various forms of what has become known as faceted searching. Some allow you to Save searches and search results in folders you create and return to; some only allow you to search and then email/print/save results session by session.

For more information on using databases, visit the Library Basics Libguide and look at the Databases tab and sub-tabs for tutorials, search techniques, help with specific database interfaces {Ebsco, ProQuest, Science Direct, Web of Knowledge}