General Databases
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Alternate version: Academic Search Ultimate in the classic EBSCO user interface (best for exporting more than 50 results or combining saved searches). A scholarly, multidisciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for over 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and others. Also includes full-text access to over 5,000 journals. Offers coverage of many areas of academic study including: archaeology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, physics, psychology, religion & theology, women's studies, and other fields.
- IBZ Online - International Bibliography of Periodical Literature This link opens in a new windowUniversal index of periodical literature covering basic research from all fields of knowledge, and is particularly strong in the humanities and the social sciences. Over 11,500 periodicals are indexed by this multilingual database, now containing over 3.2 million records. It is international in scope, and indexes a significant proportion the the periodicals published on the European continent.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and basic sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added approximately on a weekly basis. The University of Illinois has access to the following JSTOR collections: Arts & Sciences I-XV, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Business IV, Global Plants, Hebrew Journals, Ireland, Life Sciences Collection, Lives of Literature, Security Studies, Struggles for Freedom - South Africa, Sustainability, and World Heritage Sites - Africa. - Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Periodicals Archive Online is a major archive that makes the backfiles of scholarly periodicals in the arts, humanities and social sciences available electronically, providing access to the searchable full text of hundreds of titles. The database spans more than two centuries of content, 37 key subject areas, and multiple languages. - Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is the largest abstract and citation database including peer-reviewed titles from international publishers, Open Access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications and quality web sources. Subject coverage includes: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Finding Articles
Step One: Finding your database
You have a research topic and now you need a relevant database to search. To do this just turn to one of the side boxes for lists of relevant databases. Remember - if one database isn't giving you the results you want, feel free to switch to another database.
Step Two: Finding online articles
There are three ways to find online articles:
- Directly through a database, which will provide a link to online articles through the Library's Discover Full Text (Note: it's in a blue box).
- Through one of the Library's online catalogs: U of I Collection or Easy Search.
- Not all online journals can be found in a database or the online catalog. To find them, search the Library's Online Journals by title of the journal. Please note this site only lets you search for journals and not individual articles.
Step Three: Finding print articles
Not everything is available in electronic format. Keep your citation (name of journal, volume, and issue) handy. Now search the Library's online catalog for the location of the print journal.There are two ways to search the online catalog.
- Through the new Primo Catalog.
- Through the Easy Search.
Look to see which library holds the issue or volume that you need and jot down the location and call number. Now you need to visit a departmental library to make a photocopy. There are a number of scanners in the Library. Many are located in Room 200 and the Main Stacks.
Step Four: Interlibrary Loan
If your article is not available in full-text online and it is not available in print, you can request the article through Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery. Make sure to choose "Request a photocopy" and fill out the entire form, including the source of the citation. This process typically takes 7-10 days, so plan ahead! Interlibrary Loan will most likely deliver your article as a .pdf file to your email address.
Article Indexes for Medieval Studies
Subject-specific databases are listed under in the topic sections.
- Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender IndexCovers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.
- Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowThe Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies are multidisciplinary bibliographies of Europe, North Africa and the Near East (300-1500), founded in 1967 with the aim of providing a comprehensive, current bibliography of articles in journals and miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) worldwide. The bibliographies comprise 365,000 articles, all of which are fully classified by date, subject and location, and provide full bibliographical records.
- Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance This link opens in a new windowContains electronic resources for researchers in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Enables users to access citations in journal, book, and reviews databases; provides online access to Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter Italicum (a finding list of Renaissance humanistic manuscripts); provides access to the International Directory of Scholars (a comprehensive directory of contact information, and information on the research and teaching careers of scholars around the world). Subscription includes a membership to the Renaissance Society of America.
- Mirabile: Digital Archive for Medieval Latin Culture This link opens in a new windowMirabile is an online content aggregator of Medieval resources. It contains extensive databases of medieval studies resulting from collaboration between the Societ{grave}a Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (SISMEL) and the Fondazione Ezio Franceschini (FEF) and their journals published by SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo.--Agostino Paravicini Bagliano, President, Societ{grave}a internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo latino.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new windowOffers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on specific topics in a growing range of subject areas. There are at least 50 specific topical bibliographies in each subject area. Each of these features an introduction to the topic. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable. Contains a My OBO function that allows users to create personalized bibliographies of individual citations from different bibliographies.
- Regesta Imperii Akademie der WissenschaftenThe RI-Opac is a freely accessible database, covering all disciplines of medieval sciences for the European language sphere.
Primary Source Databases
- Defining Gender, 1450-1910 This link opens in a new windowDefining Gender has brought together over 120,000 pages of original documents relating to Gender Studies. The images are sourced from British and European libraries and archives, including a strong core of document images from the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the British Library.
- Medieval Travel Writing This link opens in a new windowProvides an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing. The core is a collection of medieval manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. The manuscripts are from the British Library; Bodleian Library; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Cambridge University Library; Trinity College, Cambridge; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek; Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; the Beinecke Library at Yale University and about 15 other Libraries and Archives.
- Medieval Family Life This link opens in a new windowMedieval Family Life contains full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts that comprise the Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor, and Armburgh family letter collections, along with full-text searchable transcripts from printed editions. Also includes family trees, chronology, a map, and a glossary.