The databases are the best place to start looking for articles, for many reasons:
They're convenient:
Search the databases 24 hours a day from wherever you have Internet access. You can even download the EBSCOhost app for iPhone or Android to search the database from your smart phone.
They're free:
If you search for articles using Google or Yahoo, you may be asked to pay for the full text of an article. You will never be charged for an article in the library databases. Even if you find an article that we don't have full-text access to through the databases, the librarians can always order it for you - free of charge - through interlibrary loan.
They have more stuff:
You can't find everything on the Web with a Google search. Many scholarly articles and publications are not available for free online, and can only be accessed through subscription databases like the ones we offer at SanJac.
They're reliable:
Using websites for research can be risky if you don't thoroughly evaluate web sources for accuracy, substance, authority, currency, and other considerations. When you use sources from the databases for your research, you can be confident you are using vetted, scholarly sources.
They have great features:
The databases have student-friendly features that websites don't have, like citation formatting, free account and folder features, search alerts, and email features. For more information on these features, check out the Working with Articles tab in this guide.
Academic Search Complete is the library's biggest and most comprehensive database.
A database is just a big, digital collection of records with a search interface, allowing you to search a large collection of information quickly for records that match your search criteria.
In the case of Academic Search Complete and many of our other databases, the records are individual articles from printed magazines, newspapers, and journals (sometimes called 'academic journals' or 'scholarly journals'). In addition to articles, you'll also find images, reports, conference proceedings, book chapters, and more.
So instead of searching through one paper magazine at a time, you can search across literally millions of articles at once, using the database!
Let's say you have an assignment that requires you to find an article that fits certain conditions: published in a scholarly journal, published within the last five years, longer than 10 pages, etc. With Academic Search Complete, you can easily limit your search to make sure your results fit all of your assignment criteria.
Use the Limit Your Results' tab in this guide to find out how to use the Advanced Search screen to your advantage.
This full-text database of peer-reviewed academic journals covers nearly all areas of study including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, arts, and literature. Content from these databases is also available: Computer Source, Health Source, Professional Development Collection, Psychology and Behavioral Science, Religion and Philosophy and the Sociology Collection. DEDICATED GUIDE | HELP SHEET |VIDEO TUTORIAL
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