Research Guides: EN 111: College Writing: Library Search: Find sources

Introduction to Library Databases

What is a database?

A database stores information according to some system of organization.

What's an example of a database?

Your phone's contacts are a database. The contacts system stores phone numbers, names, etc., and you can find them by searching.

What does a library database store?

A library database stores information about resources—books, journals, videos—and often also stores the resources themselves. You can find resources about your topic by searching.

How do I use a library database for an assignment?

Search for a term or terms—you might need to do several searches!—related to your topic. You will find news articles, academic journal articles, videos, and more about that topic. Once you have search results, you will have to decide which ones you will read or watch. Then, you will decide which sources contribute to your paper. The strategies on the Assessing Sources page can help you decide which sources to use for your paper and how to use them.

Library Search Tools

Database List
To do a focused and thorough search for scholarly articles, news articles, streaming video, etc., use a specific database. Choose one from the lists below or browse the lists of databases for different subjects at this link.

Library Search

Find Reference Sources

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This multidisciplinary online reference library provides access to a selection of 601 reference books and 3,412,690 entries.
Credo Reference also includes cross-references to other full text titles containing related information.
History Research Center (History Online) This link opens in a new window
Collection of reference databases containing biographies, events & topics, overview essays, primary sources and more. The content covers American, Modern World, and Ancient and Medieval History.
Points of View Reference Center This link opens in a new window
A full-text database designed to provide students with a series of controversial essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study, and are accompanied by supporting articles from the world’s top political and societal publications. Funded by the New Jersey State Library.

Find Quantitative Data

Statista This link opens in a new window
Direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest, categorized into 21 market sectors.
Statista integrates data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single platform.

Find News & Popular Sources

US Newsstream (previously Newsstand) This link opens in a new window
Full text of over 1300 newspapers, news websites and blogs from leading publishers throughout the world. The database includes the backfile for most newspapers, providing access to articles, columns, editorials, obituaries and features published in each paper.

Find Scholarly Sources

Library databases have a variety of advanced search functions. One function is Boolean operators, like AND and OR.

AND allows you to combine topics: a search for "this" and "that" returns documents that have both "this" and "that" in them, like the middle of a Venn diagram for "this" and "that".
OR allows you to search for multiple similar terms at once. In the example below, "women's empowerment", "women's rights", and "gender equity" are not exactly the same thing, but they are related concepts. Connecting these similar terms with OR searches for any one of these terms.

Start your search in one of these databases:

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
A scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 4,770 full-text journals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals.
This multi-disciplinary database offers an enormous collection of the most valuable full-text journals, providing users access to critical information from many sources unique to this database. It includes more than 13,780 indexed and abstracted journals and provides full-text for 4,770 journals, including full-text for 4,000 peer-reviewed titles. You will find PDF backfiles to 1975 or further as well as searchable cited references for more than 1,050 journals. This database is an excellent source of peer-reviewed, full-text for STEM research, as well as for the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Criminal Justice Periodicals (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
This database supports research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends; includes U.S. and international scholarly journals, correctional and law enforcement trade publications, crime reports, crime blogs and other relevant material.
The database includes abstract and indexing for 250 titles, with more than 100 available in full-text.
Education Journals This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journals, trade publications, and magazines related to primary, secondary, and higher education; special education; home schooling; adult education; and hundreds of related topics.
This Proquest database indexes over 820 periodical titles in education, including over 630 scholarly journals, 120 trade publications, and over 50 magazines. Citations and abstracts are available back to 1971 for several titles, and full-text access is available for over 650 titles, with current full-text content provided for over 460 of these.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
More than 1.4 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials; most journals are peer-reviewed but not all are full-text.
In addition to the journal literature, ERIC indexes education-related materials from a variety of sources, including scholarly organizations, professional associations, research centers, policy organizations, university presses, the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies, and state and local agencies. Funded by the New Jersey State Library.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
Scholarly, government and general-interest publications covering all aspects of human impact to the environment, including global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records. Funded by the New Jersey State Library.
JSTOR Sustainability This link opens in a new window
JSTOR Sustainability is a collection of academic and policy research on environmental stresses and their impact on society. There also topic pages, which explain more than 1,500 key terms related to sustainability, as well as theme-based searching.
Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Topic overviews, journal articles, news, pro/con viewpoint essays, primary documents and links to websites for a variety of social issues. All articles are full-text.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
This multidisciplinary resource contains full-text journal articles, trade journals and consumer publications from 47 of ProQuest's most highly used databases, with a variety of content types across over 160 subjects. Subject areas include the arts and humanities, business, health, medicine, science, the social sciences, and news.
PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
More than 153,000 full-text articles from 80 journals published by American Psychological Association and allied organizations. Coverage spans 1894 to the present and nearly all APA journals go back to Volume 1, Issue 1.
All journals included in this database are indexed in PsycINFO.