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HY 136: United States History since 1877: Research Articles and Databases

This guide was created for the HY 136 class at USA.

Articles and Databases

A database is a collection of many different academic journals that can all be searched at once. Most academic journals use a peer-review process to review articles for quality before publication.

You search a database by creating a search query. Search queries use search terms and can have Boolean Operators and punctuation. Based off your search query, you will get a list of articles (and other resources) as results.

What's in a Search?

Databases do not understand questions like Google can.

Databases talk through search queries. 

Search queries are combinations of search terms, Boolean Operators, and punctuation.

  • Search terms
    • Break your research question down into individual words or small phrases.
  • Boolean Operators
    • Follow the Boolean Operators page.
  • Punctuation Marks
    • " " - Quotation marks means you want that exact phrase to be searched. Not all databases follow this.
      • "Carnegie Library" - you only get resources that have "Carnegie Library" exactly.
    • ? - Truncation/Wildcard symbol. Tells the database to substitute any letter there.
      • bibliograph? = bibliography, bibliographies, bibliographic...
      • read? = read, reading, reader, readmit, readdress...

Searching in Google Scholar

You can search for articles using Google Scholar.

Google Scholar doesn't have multiple separate search textboxes like most databases, but you can make your own separate textboxes with parentheses.

Example database search:

Screenshot of a search query in Academic Search Complete. The top textbox is: cyberbullying or "cyber bullying". The middle textbox is: children or adolescents or youth or teenager. The bottom textbox is: truancy or "student absenteeism" or "school attendance".

In Google Scholar, I can make my own textboxes with parentheses. I connect these groups with AND.

For my example search, it would look like this:

(cyberbullying or "cyber bullying") AND (children or adolescents or youth or child or teenager) AND (truancy or "student absenteeism" or "school attendance")

 

You won't have access to every item listed in Google Scholar. 

If you can access a copy of the article, you will have "Full-Text@USA" as an option and/or you will have a PDF linked beside the article's description.

Screenshot of a Google Scholar result. The button "Full-Text@USA" is highlighted.

If you do not have access to the article, you can make an Interlibrary Loan request for a PDF of the article.