Research Guides: FTS: Making Beats: Finding Articles

Scholarly Sources

Academic Search Premier

A good place to start research on most any subject. This multi-disciplinary database indexes nearly 8,050 publications and provides full text for nearly 4,600, including more than 3,900 peer-reviewed journals. Access is provided by eLibraryMN (ELM).
Google Scholar

This search engine points toward scholarly research rather than all Web-based sources. It is stronger in the sciences than in the humanities, with social sciences somewhere in between. One interesting feature of Google Scholar is that in includes a link to sources that cite a particular item. Not all of the articles in Google Scholar are free; the library can obtain many of them for you through Interlibrary loan.
JSTOR

JSTOR is a digital library of journals, academic eBooks, images, and primary sources. JSTOR provides book and journal content from the date of initial publication up to a "moving wall" of 3 to 5 years before the present year.

Looking for articles on a specific topic? Visit our Research Guides for subject-specific databases.

News Sources

US Newsstream
Indexing and selected full text access to over 350 newspapers from around the world. Archival coverage begins in 1985 for some titles. Access is provided by eLibraryMN (ELM).
Access World News (Newsbank)

Provides the full text of global, regional and local news sources. Coverage ranges from over 40 Minnesota sources to international sources from over 200 countries.

Accessing the Full Text of Articles

Once you've identified an interesting article, look to see if the full text is there. If not, follow these steps:

Click the yellow "find it!" button, which will search to see if it is full text in another database or in the library's print collection.
If it is full text in another database, click the links to get to the article itself. Note: the systems don't always talk to each other perfectly. Sometimes the links go to the wrong places. If this is the case, contact a librarian. We are happy to help you track it down.
If the article is full text in print, take a field trip to the bottom floor of the library. Print journals are shelved alphabetically by title of the journal. Find the section containing your journal and then track down the article using the date/volume information. With the exception of the most recent issue of some popular magazines, you may check magazines and journals out for a week.

If an article is not available in full text or in print, request it through interlibrary loan, using your Gustavus account login to identify yourself. This generally means it will be scanned in for you at another library. An e-mail message will be sent to you with a URL and pin number to retrieve it. Though these scanned articles are sometimes are available within 24 hours, they can take longer. Plan ahead.

Sometimes you come across a footnote with an article that looks interesting. You don't need to turn to a database to find it. Check the title of the magazine or journal (not the article title) from the journal locator. If it is not available to us at Gustavus, log in to your library account and fill out an interlibrary loan request.

As you can see, tracking down the hard copies of materials can be tricky! Need help? Contact a librarian!

Searching for articles activity

With your partner:

Open Academic Search Premier
Conduct a search for "electronic music"
Skim through your search results and consider the following:
- What are some of the specific topics you see in your results list?
- Find an article that looks interesting and click the title to view the full article record
- From the full article record, note the keywords under "Subject Terms" and "Author-Supplied Keywords"
- From the full article record, skim the abstract, if one is available
- See if you can find the full text of the article
- Do you think the article you've selected is a credible source? Do you think it is a scholarly source? How do you know?