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Sociology

Resources for students

Use Databases to Find Articles

  • Academic OneFile
    Articles from thousands of magazines, newspapers, and peer-reviewed journals. Includes the New York Times newspaper as far back as 1985.
    How to Use
  • Gale In Context: College
    Magazines, newspapers, journals, critical essays, vocational and technical periodicals, biographies, video, images, audio, and primary source documents.
  • JSTOR
    Includes Artstor images. JSTOR is an article archive. It does not include current articles. The collection includes Open Access, and Archival & Primary Source collections.
  • National Geographic
    Current issues and archive of National Geographic magazine. Includes image and advertisement searching. Coverage: 1888 - present.
  • ProQuest Central
    Includes articles in academic journals, newspapers, and general interest magazines. Click on Databases (4) to select specific databases or subject areas to search within.
    How to use ProQuest
  • ScienceDirect
    Scholarly journal articles from the health, life, social, and behavioral sciences.

When Should I Use a Database?

Since Primo Library Search includes articles in its results, you may be wondering why you would bother to search in a journal article database. There are several reasons for using an individual database:

  • Noise - Say you're looking for information on zombies (computers that distribute spam) and you find articles on the walking dead, philosophy, anthropology, and other subjects; using a database that specializes in computer literature lets you focus on your topic
  • Bells and Whistles - Some databases have specialized subject headings and powerful search features; most let you search within the full text of articles
  • Thoroughness - not all database articles are included in Primo Library Search, for technical reasons; some articles from Education Resource Complete and CINAHL (Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), many newspapers (including The Oregonian), most images, and the databases on the Databases on the Web guide are not included in the Library Search 

APA Citations

MLA Citations