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The University Libraries have numerous bibliographic or research databases that will allow you to locate books, book chapters, full text articles, abstracts of articles, and citations to articles.
Though they may have many similarities, each database has a particular scope in terms of content and date coverage. Choosing the right database is essential to getting off on the right foot with your research. This guide can help you determine what databases you should use to answer your research questions, but please never hesitate to ask a librarian for some database suggestions.
What do you Need?
I Need Books on My Topic
- tomCat, the online catalog: to see what books the University Libraries own
- netLibrary: to see what books the University Libraries has access to electronically
- Safari Tech Books Online: to see what technical books are available electronically
- WorldCat: to see what books are available at libraries worldwide
I Need Articles on My Topic
If you are just getting started, only need a few articles on your topic, or hope to find full text articles: try a general database like InfoTrac OneFile or WilsonSelectPlus. These databases will have references to articles on a variety of topics that have been published in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. InfoTrac OneFile provides many articles in full text and all of the articles in WilsonSelectPlus are available full text. However, these databases do not provide a comprehensive listing of articles published on any one topic.
If you need to do comprehensive research on a topic from a particular subject or discipline, or have not been able to locate enough information using a general database: try a subject or discipline specific database. These databases often will have references to books, book chapters, articles, dissertations, theses, conference proceedings, and other types of publications in a given field. These databases often provide abstracts (summaries) of articles, and rarely provide the full text of articles. To find out what databases are available for various disciplines, please try the Databases by Academic Area.
I Need to Know if the Library Has a Specific Periodical
If you know the name of the periodical (magazine, journal, or newspaper) you are looking for, you will need to use the Telnet version of tomCat, the online catalog to determine if the University Libraries has a subscription to that periodical and if so, where it is kept (current periodicals, unbound periodicals, microfilm, microfiche). Please see the guide How to Find Periodicals for step by step instructions on finding periodicals: http://exlibris.memphis.edu/help/findper.html.
I Need to Know if I Can Get This Article Online
If you have a citation for an article and want to see if you can access it online, use Electronic Journals and Full Text Articles. If you enter the name of the periodical, it will tell you if the University Libraries has online access to it and for what dates.
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