Databases are resources that contain information that is organized to make it easier to search and access.
The most common kind of library databases contain articles from academic journals and other publications, but there are many kinds of databases--databases for images, videos, data, news, and many other kinds of sources!
The databases here are just a few that could be useful for the kinds of research topics you might be pursuing in this course. Some, like Academic Search Complete, are multidisciplinary. Others, like PsycINFO or GenderWatch, focus on specific subjects such as psychology or women and gender studies. Check out our Database A-Z list and sort by Subject to see relevant databases for your topic.
Full-text scholarly articles in all disciplines.
Scholarly journal articles and magazine articles in the fields of communications, mass media, journalism, television, film, radio, newspaper publishing, speech, broadcasting, and advertising.
Full-text peer-reviewed articles on gender, sex, and sexuality in history, sociology, psychology, education, art, and more.
Scholarly journal articles and books in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Does not include the most recent 3-5 years of many journals.
Full-text scholarly journal articles and books on all aspects of literature, along with literary reference works (encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographies, and topic overviews) and the full text of thousands of literary works from the 8th century to the present.
Political science resources, including scholarly and peer reviewed journal articles and think tank reports. Covers international as well as U.S. topics and sources.
Citations to journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations from the international scholarly literature of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Access to a thesaurus of psychological terms.
Scholarly and peer reviewed articles in sociology.
Unsure about what database to use? Ask me!
Many databases allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles. Learn about peer review in this short video (from the University of Kansas Libraries).
The Wellesley Library Catalog is a way to search for books, ebooks, and videos (not individual articles). Although SuperSearch includes the library catalog, searching the catalog separately can give you a smaller, more focused set of results. While SuperSearch will search inside many books, for example, the library catalog will just search information about each book (what is often called metadata). This can be very helpful for relevancy (since you'll only get results in which your search terms are important enough to be included in the metadata), but it means the specific terms you choose become more important. Try a variety of keywords, and use what you find to find more. You can also use the subject terms to find related materials.
Tips:
"social media" AND adolescents
leads to linked subject terms and more books related to different aspects of this topic:
Can't find what you're looking for at Wellesley?
Use WorldCat Discovery to search and request directly from libraries worldwide via Interlibrary Loan.
Questions? Interlibrary Loan Guide