LibGuides: Anthropology 399JD: Sustainability, Humans, and Animals: Finding Journal Articles

Activity: Comparing searches in three databases

Where should you search for scholarly journal articles? It all depends on your topic and the search terms you use. Some subject-specific article databases (ie. Anthropology Plus; Zoological Record) may be helpful in narrowing your search to articles in a certain discipline or field, if results from a more general search engine or database are too broad. Other times, interdisciplinary topics require a search in a broader database (ie. Academic Search Complete; Google Scholar). Often, you'll use a combination of both.

In this activity, you'll use one example search combination of words that you developed in Activity 3 (in the From Research tab) in three different article databases to compare the search results. The three databases are: Anthropology Plus, Zoological Record, and Google Scholar. Do the same search in all three, look at the first page of search results.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How many total results do I get?
What kinds of sources do I see? (ex. Anthropology Journals? Biological? Books? Newspaper articles? Other?) What are the benefits and drawbacks of each database for this assignment and for my research question?
Do the results of one work better than another for my topic? Or are they complimentary?
Is there anything I expected to see that I don’t see here?
Is there anything that showed up that I didn’t expect?
How could I tweak my search for better/different results?

Books can also be sources of scholarly research. Try your search in the Library Catalog, and compare your results using the questions above.

Searching for Anthropology Articles- Database & Index Quick Links

Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window Anthropology Plus combines Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and the Anthropological Index, Royal Anthropological Institute from the UK. Anthropology Plus provides worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies. The index offers coverage of all core periodicals in the field in addition to local and lesser-known journals. Coverage is from the late 19th century to the present.
Alternate Access Link
Zoological Record This link opens in a new window Zoological Record is the world's oldest continuing database of animal biology. It is considered the world's leading taxonomic reference, and with coverage back to 1864, has long acted as the world's unofficial register of animal names. The broad scope of coverage ranges from biodiversity and the environment to taxonomy and veterinary sciences.

More Databases, by Anthropology Subdiscipline
Links to more suggested databases, organized by anthropology sub-discipline (General, Biological, Sociocultural/Linguistic, Archaeology and Museum Studies)

But my topic is interdisciplinary...where should I search?

A-Z Databases
Find the best library databases for your research. Filter by subject and content type.

Libraries by College and Major
Use this list of UIUC majors to find the one(s) that are most related to yoru topic, then find the library website that serves those students. Other campus libraries also have lists of relevant databases, and guides to research on various topics.
UIUC Library Guides (LibGuides)
Online library resource guides created by UIUC librarians. Browse by subject or search for a specific topic.

How to find Journal Articles

What type of search should you do if...

You have an article citation and need to find the full-text of the article at the University of Illinois. Answer: Use the Journal and Article Locator (linked below.)

Journal and Article Locator

You want to search for articles on a certain subject or topic. Answer: Use an Article Abstract/Index Database to search by keywords/subjects. See Quick Links on the left to get started.

Discover Full Text

After you've found an article citation in a database, how do you go about getting your hands on the actual article? Some databases have full text articles in them already. In this case, you should see a link to either an HTML or PDF document. If the full text isn't available in a specific database, you should see a button that looks like this:

Clicking this button will open a new browser tab or window and will search the Illinois library subscriptions and online catalog. This new page will tell you if we have electronic access to the specific article you need.

If it indicates that we have online full text, click the link to get to the article.

Add "Discover UIUC" to your Google Scholar Library Links
Google Scholar can generate "Discover" menus from our institution's OpenURL link resolver. To set this up:
1) Go to Google Scholar "settings" from the link above.
2) Click "Library Links" (on the left side of the screen)
3) Enter "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign" into the box and click the magnifying glass or hit return.
4) Check the box that says "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-Discover Full Text - Discover Full Text"
After you have done this, the "More" link under each item in Google Scholar search results will offer a "Discover UIUC" menu for the item, so you can find our licensed full text.
Read more about the Discover service.

UIUC doesn't have this article- now what?

How Do I...Request an Article through Interlibrary Loan?
Instructions and links to request a copy of a journal article through ILLiad when it is not available through University of Illinois print or online resources.