Using Library Databases for Articles and Other Sources
When you do research for an assignment, you will think about the types of sources you need to support your topic. While the internet has many sources you can use, research assignments may require more academic or scholarly sources. Academic sources are written by instructors, other researchers, professors, and experts in that field. They usually have more complicated language and provide references or other sources they use to support their topic in the form of citations. Academic sources can most easily be found in library databases than on the internet.
You can find academic databases on the GCC Library website by:
- Go to the GCC Library website.
- Under Research Help, select "Databases A-Z".
- Find the suggested databases for your assignment.
Databases to Use for Articles, Contextualized Documents, and Media
- OneSearchLocate books, articles and more in the Glendale College Libraries.
- ProQuest
Peer-reviewed/academic articles in addition to newspaper, magazine, and trade journals from all subject areas.
- US Newsstream (Proquest)News sources including newspapers, newswires, blogs, and news sites.
- Social ExplorerUse Social Explorer to visualize and interact with data, create maps, charts, reports and downloads. Instructions: https://campusguides.glendale.edu/socialexplorer
- America: History & Life with Full TextHistory and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.
- JSTOR ImagesA comprehensive image database for educational and scholarly use. Artstor images are now hosted on the JSTOR platform.
- Films on DemandFilms On Demand is an educational streaming video resource. It provides access to more than 40,000 quality, curriculum-focused programs from more than 1,000 acclaimed producers, including BBC, PBS, NBC News, ABC News, National Geographic, A&E, and Films for the Humanities & Science.
How To Find Scholarly Articles in a Database
If you want to find articles in library databases, you need to search with keywords or search terms. Keywords are the main ideas of your research topic.
Research Topic Example:
I want to find resources on the effects of divorce on the stress level of children in the United States,
From my topic, I need to look at WHAT is important, WHO I'm talking about, and WHERE is it happening.
My keywords can be: WHO: children of divorce; WHAT: stress; and WHERE: United States
Note: We can put children of divorce and Unites States in quotation marks to search them as phrases.
Example Search in the ProQuest Database:
- On the library webpage, click on A-Z databases.
- Find the ProQuest database on the left side of the page under "Recommended Databases", or by clicking on the "P" letter.
- In the advanced search page of ProQuest, enter your keywords in the search box, in my example children of divorce, stress, and United States. Use AND to connect these ideas and find them together, or you can type each term in one box and add more boxes if you need. Put children of divorce and United States in quotation marks to search them as phrases. You can also check the full-text option and modify the date to get the full-text articles from the last five years. Note: You can select the different source or document types from the "Source type" and "Document type" menus on the bottom of the page.
- Below are your search results. You can further limit the results by other available options. Click here to go directly to the page below.
- Below are the search results limited to newspaper articles only. Click here to go directly to the page below.
- Click on any of the titles to access the full text. Remember you can use the cite, email, print, and save options for easier access at a later time. Click here to go directly to the page below.
