Looking for good educational database?
I do have access to my University library but was trying to look outside the walls of my school. Although, I am having a time locating articles that are peer reviewed or scholorly.
I have tried looking through other online databases through other schools, but you need log-in information, so I am going to have to go somewhere else or try to find someone who knows of somewhere else I can look, that I don’t need log-in.
Favorite Answer
The second thing to do is use Google Scholar. Regular academic databases, you’ve probably noticed, are awful when it comes to searching. It’s really hard to find what you want! So go to:
http://www.scholar.google.com
Google Scholar is another database, but it only searches for peer-reviewed academic journal articles and books, so that takes the mystery out of it – it will only give you results that any university would happily accept as scholarly. And it searches a lot better.
Of course, you won’t have access to all the articles, because your university won’t have bought subscriptions to every journal on the planet. If you’re using a campus computer, you should be able to access a good amount of them without being asked to log-in or buy a subscription. If you have to work from home, though, the process takes a few more steps:
Most universities have library websites where you can search for online resources (sometimes called “e-resources”). You can generally search by journal/periodical title. So let’s say you found an article in Google Scholar called “New Daffodils: Flowers in the 21st Century” written by Tom Smith and it’s in the journal “Journal Of American Plants”, volume 3, issue 1.
You’ll go into your university library’s online resources search page, and search for the journal “Journal of American Plants”. If your library has access to the journal, it will show up. Click on it, and you can navigate to your article by knowing the volume and issue numbers, as well as the title. You may also be able to search by author.
It’s possible you may have to go through the university library’s search system every time if you aren’t on campus, so this takes a little more work!
Also, I’ve given you instructions on how to find articles online – but if you do a journal search from your library website in regular, hard copy resources – not online ones – you’re more likely to find the journal. However, you’ll have to walk over to the library and find the journal in the stacks of books.
I know it would be easier to find articles without having to go through your university library at all, but the problem is that universities are usually the only places that can afford peer-reviewed scholarly articles. They’re expensive – subscribing to a journal for one year usually costs over $100.
So ultimately, your success really depends on how well you can use your university’s library search. If you aren’t experienced with the library site, it may have online tutorials, or you can drop by the library and they can give you a quick explanation or workshop.
To sum up – go on over to Google Scholar to find titles/descriptions of great scholarly articles (and some whole articles), and then use your university library site to track down the articles Google Scholar can’t sign you in to.
I hope this helps! If you give us a more specific description of what you’re researching hopefully someone here can offer more assistance.
Good luck!
