USING PERIODICAL DATABASES IN RESEARCH
Almost all college and university libraries have extensive computerized databases of
periodicals. The periodicals covered include everything from daily newspapers (such as The New
York Times) to popular magazines (such as People) to general scholarly journals (such as The
American Historical Review) to specialized scholarly journals (such as The American Benedictine
Review). For purposes of this course, we will focus on getting information from scholarly
journals. Scholarly journals have the advantage that their articles have been checked for accuracy,
logic, and relevance by experts in the field and contain full citations (footnotes, endnotes,
parenthetical references, and/or bibliographies) showing where the author got the information. The
disadvantage is that they are sometimes a little narrow in focus and the language can sometimes be
rather technical.
Because these resources are costly to prepare and extremely valuable for research, libraries
have to subscribe to these services and can allow only their patrons to access them. People who
visit the library in person can usually access databases without any problem from the library's
terminals (though some libraries might also require a password or limit the number of people who can
access the databases at one time). Off-site access through the internet is generally restricted by
password. You can access these resources off-campus by going through TSU’s library web page
and using your name and the number on your TSU ID card.
The periodical databases in libraries often contain only citations and summaries of journal
articles. In that case, you would have to use the citation to find a physical volume in your library's
collection (or order a copy through interlibrary loan). Many databases, however, offer full-text
articles. This means that you can see the entire text of the article just as if reading the original journal
(with the same page numbers, footnotes, illustrations, and everything). In some cases you will need
to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer in order to read these files (the basic version of the
program is free and easy to install---most databases will give you a link to Adobe if it's necessary). A
handful of databases will offer full-text of articles from some journals but not others (usually you can
choose to search only the full-text titles).
Probably the best full-text database for historical research is JSTOR. To access JSTOR, go to
TSU's library page, then navigate to a list of databases. JSTOR should be listed under "History" or
"Humanities" or "Literature" (or probably all three). When you open JSTOR, you will have the option
of "Browse" or "Search." "Browse" will let you go through the table of contents of specific
journals. This can be useful if you are trying to pick out a topic. Once you have a topic, "Search" is
the more useful function. When searching in JSTOR, you can use boolian operators (AND, NOT,
OR) to limit or expand your search and quotation marks to indicate an exact phrase. With "Advanced
Search" you have more options. You can search for words in author, title, subject, or full-text for
more precise results, but remember that searching only titles or only subjects might severely restrict
your results. "Advanced Search" also lets you select the type of article (reviews, articles, etc.), dates,
and which periodicals to survey. Once you have made all of your choices, submit your search. If you
get too many or too few results (or just irrelevant results), you will want to modify your search.
GENERAL TIPS ON USING SEARCH ENGINES AND DATABASES
Be sure to read the directions and to make all the necessary choices. If you forget to click on
something, you might come up with an empty search, even if there are lots of items in the database.
Be sure to spell correctly. The computer will recognize only correctly spelled words. In the case of
proper names, there may be more than one accepted spelling, so you might want to run more than one
search. British and American editors will sometimes spell the same word in different ways
(color/colour, theater/theatre, etc.), so you might want to run two searches.
Take advantage of the ability to truncate words. Each database is a little different, but often you can
search for all words beginning "histor" (for example) rather than running separate searches for "history,"
"historical," and "historiography."
Make sure that you are not searching for too general a term. "Reformation" and "Medieval" are
probably too general and will give you tens of thousands of hits. Try something more specific, such as
"Michelangelo” or “Edict of Nantes."
On the other hand, you don't want your search terms to be too specific. "Madonna" will give you
information about Renaissance paintings of the Virgin and child, but might exclude a lot of articles that
give insight into later and earlier works (not to mention modern singers).
"AND" will generally limit the number of results. "OPEC AND Michelangelo" is likely to yield few or no
results. The search engine will first find all articles containing "OPEC" and then will search through
those articles (and no others) for "Michelangelo." Unless an OPEC magnate recently bought a painting
by Michelangelo, it is unlikely that you will come up with anything.
"OR" will give you more results. "Michelangelo OR Renaissance" will give you all the articles about
Michelangelo (including not only the Renaissance artist but also the Ninja Turtle and maybe a pizza
parlor), then add on all the articles about the Renaissance (including the Harlem Renaissance and
other renaissances).
You can use "NOT" to exclude certain types of results. For example, if you are interested in the
Classical writing, you can search under "Classical NOT music" to exclude references to Classical music
of the 1800s.
Quotation marks will let you identify an entire phrase. If you search for Julius Caesar as separate
words, you might get William Julius Wilson or Caesar’s Pizza. If you put "Julius Caesar" in quotation
marks, then you should get only articles which mention the Roman general and statesman of that
name.
When your results come up, you often will have the option of sorting the results by "relevance" (how
well the article matches what you are searching for) or date (when the article was
published). Relevance is usually the better choice.
If you search through "full-text," you will get a larger number of results, but possibly also a lot of
irrelevant results (for example, "ancient" would bring up an article that talked about "ancient China" or
one that stated that the author was reminded of an "ancient crone"). Searching under "keyword" or
"title" or "subject" might give a better selection of articles.
Some databases allow you to limit your search to only certain types of articles. The most common
limitations would be to search only for full-text articles (no citations that you would have to look up in a
physical library) or only for articles in refereed journals (journals that send their articles out to be
reviewed by experts in the field, "referees," before the articles will be accepted for publication) or only
book reviews or only articles.
Some databases will allow you to limit your search by date. If you get a lot of results, you might want to
eliminate those that are more than 10 or 25 or 50 years old. Usually (but not always), the more recent
research will summarize any relevant earlier work.
Many articles will be quite technical, so you should be prepared to use your dictionary or ask the
instructor if you come across terms or concepts that do not make sense to you.
Many articles will discuss your topic only briefly. Some of these might nevertheless yield valuable
results. JSTOR will allow you to see which pages contain matches to your search, so you can go
straight to the relevant information. You can also open the pdf of the whole article then search for
words within the article
Once you find a few articles that fit your topic, use the footnotes/endnotes and bibliography (if any) to
locate other articles and books. JSTOR lets you look for articles that cite the article you are looking at.