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FCS 4347: Family Policy in Family & Consumer Sciences: Articles & Databases

This course guide was created for FCS 4347 (Family Policy) class.

Article & Database Terms Q&A

What is a research database?
A research database is a searchable collection of thousands of articles, often organized by subject.

What is a scholarly journal?
A scholarly journal is a scholarly publication with multiple articles that is often subject specific or has a specific audience.  Sometimes referred to as a periodical, because they are published at regularly occurring intervals. 

Overview

Use Research Databases to find articles on your topic.

  • Databases are electronic indexes that provide searchable "lists" of articles printed in journals, popular magazines, newspapers, or other items on almost any subject you can think of!
  • Databases can be searched by subject, title, and/or author
  • Many of the articles contain full-text, meaning that the actual article is available in the database, sometimes it is not and you have to look for it using our link source button, or the Periodical List, or you might even have to see if we have the print version of it available.

The library has over 500 databases and choosing one is the first step for successful searching. You can choose a research database by Subject, by Name, or by Type. Try a database particular to your subject for more advanced research in your subject area by using the databases listed under By Subject.

Using Google Scholar

Google Scholar covers articles, theses, books, abstracts, court opinions and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research, and may include pre-prints and web-published reports as well as published literature. Since Google Scholar indexes information from multiple sources (provided by publishers, included in databases such as PubMed, found on the public web, etc.), there is no comprehensive list of which publications it covers.  However, for many fields, the greater number of publication formats included means that Google Scholar may find citations that are not indexed in the Web of Science.

To search for citing publications in Google Scholar, you may want to start with a search for your researchers name.  To get the best results that include various ways they may be cited, search all variations of the name within quotation marks, preceded by author: For example, to search for citations to Peter Linebaugh's work, search for

author:"P Linebaugh" OR author:"Peter Linebaugh"

Results will be listed (generally) with the most-cited publications first.  To see the list of citing documents, click on 'Cited by [number]' below an entry to display all citing documents. Google Scholar will attempt to group all versions of a single work into one entry and combine the citations, but please note that it is not always able to do so, and you may see additional entried (with citations) to a work.  See the examples in red boxes in the figure below.

 

Finding Article Fulltext

Databases automatically link you to the fulltext or offer the option to check to find a copy of your article, "Full Text Finder". Sometimes you'll see this option under Access Options:

Databases for Peer-Reviewed Articles

Commonly Used Databases - Multi Subject

Newspapers

The following newspapers can be accessed through Newspaper Source Plus:

Austin-American Stateman
Dallas Morning News
New York Times
Washington Post

What is the Periodical List?

Not every database contains the full text of every article. However, you may be able to find the full text in another of the library's databases. To find out where you can find a particular periodical online or in print, use the Periodical List.

(click on the image to see a larger version)