Spend some time brainstorming keywords and search terms. Use the subject headings/tags in each database to help you think of search terms. For example, if you search for gender and dystopia, you might come across additional terms like female-male relations and feminist approach.
Use AND to make your search more specific by adding more keywords. Use OR to include alternative keywords and synonyms in your search.
Use an asterisk * after the root of a word to find all forms of a word. For example, a search for dystopia* will find sources that use not all the word dystopia, but also terms like dystopian, dystopianism, or dystopias.
When you find a good article, look at its References or Works Cited list. That will often lead you to other useful sources. You can also look at things like the name of the journal or the author for ideas.
Journal articles, books and dissertations focusing on literature and literary criticism, language, and publishing.
Journal articles in almost every subject area, including some historical articles back to the 17th century.
Journal articles, literary magazines, essays, biographies, and other sources focused on authors and literary movements.
Journal articles, magazines, and news in almost every subject area.
Journal articles, magazines, and news in almost every subject area.
In addition to searching the research databases listed here, you may also want to try searching in specific subject specific journals
by using the E-Journals Search.
Examples of journals:
Google Scholar is a great tool for doing a broad search of scholarly literature on your topic:
Google Scholar searches across many disciplines.
Your search results will include a broad range of sources, including journal articles, conference papers, theses, dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, and abstracts.
Results come from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents.
You'll just want to keep some things in mind:
Coverage is not comprehensive. Many sourcess are hidden in publishers' databases and journals that Google can't search, so you'll want to look at other databases as well.
Search results can include links to things like course syllabi and high school term papers, so you'll want to evaluate what you find.
You can access advanced search features by clicking the arrow in the right of the search box. These features allow you to refine your search.
Look for the words Get Full Txt @ Holy Cross next to an article. You should be able to access any of these articles through the library's subscriptions. If you come across a source that Holy Cross does not have access to, remember that you can request the item through Interlibrary Loan.
Scholar Settings When you are on the Holy Cross campus, Google Scholar will automatically show you those Get Full Txt @ Holy Cross links next to articles that Holy Cross has access to. If you are off-campus, you can set your Scholar Settings to show the links for accessing sources through Holy Cross. You can modify your settings by selecting the Settings link in the upper-right corner of Google Scholar webpage.
Click on the Cited by and Related articles links at the bottom of a search result to find more relevant articles and books.
If you already have the citation information for an article, don't use the databases -- you can track it down directly through our E-Journals Search!
All the information that you will need is in this citation. You can find some tips for using the eJournals portal here. Can't find the journal in E-Journals? Check the catalog or CrossSearch to see if we have a paper copy in the library: