INTL 471 Understanding the International Experience: Finding Articles
Databases
- JSTORExcellent interdisciplinary coverage. Best when looking for very specific topics - not great for general topics.
- EBSCO DatabasesEBSCO is a vendor specializing in subject-specific databases. Because this course is inter-disciplinary, this link is let to search all the EBSCO databases at once.
JSTOR
Begin by typing topic key words.
You may end up with may results, but skim the first page or two before moving on.
To limit search results, select the Advanced search
This allows you to search the Abstract. For broad topics, this is an easy way to narrow results. If the topic is too specific, you may get no results.
If this happens, that's fine. Broaden the search a bit and try again.
EBSCO Databases
For interdisciplinary projects, we can use the EBSCO Suite of databases. Unlike JSTOR, it includes indexing that allows us to conduct extremely targeted research.
Begin by typing in the key themes of your project.
You may have many results. Narrow the search using the bar on the left. Be sure to also pay attention to the suggested subject terms under relevant articles.
Make sure your articles are peer reviewed. You might want to exclude older articles too. We see Spain and Dance are subject terms. Instead of keyword searching, let's search these as subjects.
Again, narrow the publication date to more recent materials. We can also cut down results by narrowing the language on the left bar.
For new results, add new keywords in the second box. Use "or" if you want to look for multiple topics at once.
Another example:
Sometimes you will find interesting articles on the first try. Pay attention to the "subjects" under each article. These will help you find more articles we might have missed in previous searches.
Instead of "politeness," the database uses "courtesy." Let's substitute those terms.
The database may also suggested other search phrases as well. These may provide additional results.
