Search Tools & Databases - FYI/FYH - Goss-Peirce - LibGuides at Augustana College

Research Databases

The library offers many research databases, some that are multidisciplinary and some that are field-specific. For our purposes in FYI, we will mostly be focusing on general, multidisciplinary research databases, but that does not mean you cannot explore the other databases in the A-Z listing (on the library homepage) for your research in this or another class.

JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, and Google Scholar are three popular databases that researchers across disciplines and divisions often use. They cover a wide variety of subjects and resource types, which makes them helpful when starting research in order to get a better idea of what information is available in your topic area.

JSTOR
JSTOR is home to over 12 million sources in a wide variety of formats across 75 academic disciplines, making it a helpful resource for finding scholarly secondary materials as well as primary materials (including art, news articles, historical pamphlets, and more).

Notable features include their collections searching, their "search within" function, and their organizing tools/workspace.
Academic Search Complete
This multidisciplinary database offers more than 8,500 full-text periodicals as well as indexes and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and over 13,200 other publications. Academic Search Complete also offers some primary source materials, such as news articles and images.

It is important to note that not all materials are directly available through Academic Search Complete; if the full text is not linked, you will have to search for the source in another database of your choosing (OneSearch, JSTOR, and Google Scholar are good starting points).
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is Google's scholarly research tool and can be used to locate scholarly publications across major academic disciplines. Google Scholar is especially helpful for its "cited by" feature that allows researchers to quickly link to other publications that reference a particular source.

Like Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar does not always link to a full text version of the source or the source may be behind a paywall. If you run into access issues, try searching for the source in library search tools (such as OneSearch, JSTOR, etc). Additionally, because this is a general research tool, you may have to be more thorough when you evaluate materials you locate through this database.