ENGL 1001 - Foundations in Rhetoric: Searching library databases

Course Guide for "English 1001: Foundations in Rhetoric"

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Library Access

Find It @MU
Find It @MU provides an easy means of linking to fulltext articles and other resources held by the MU Libraries that are not directly available in the database being searched.
Off-Campus Access
A number of library resources cannot be accessed from off-campus via the Library Login method. A VPN connection is required for these.

What are library databases?

Great question! Library databases are organized digital collections of online library resources, like newspaper, magazine and journal articles, trade and industry publications, corporate and government documents, white paper reports, and electronic books and media.

Library databases are like search engines, but they specially curate and organize their resources for college and university research, so they focus on sources from scholars and other professional writers and researchers. They also include advanced search tools specially designed for complex research, like keyword search, and publication date and discipline results filters.

Library databases for specific disciplines

Choose a discipline or topic:

Library databases for general research

CQ Researcher from CQ Press This link opens in a new window
Original full-text articles on controversial issues and current events. Each includes overview, background and bibliography. Excellent starting point. 1960-present
JSTOR from JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Guest Access
Broad collection of full-text scholarly journals (approximately 2700 titles). Discipline coverage uneven and usually does not include the most-recent three years.
News, Policy & Politics Magazine Archive from ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Digital access to the archival runs of 15 major 20th/21st-century consumer magazines covering such fields as the history of politics, current events, public policy, and international relations.
PubMed from National Institutes of Health This link opens in a new window
International coverage of over 5,600 journals in biomedicine, including allied health, nursing, and dentistry. Limited full-text. 1946 - present.
If email and send to functions do not work correctly, use this link.
Includes access to other NCBI databases including molecular biology and genomic resources.
Recollection Wisconsin from Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS) This link opens in a new window
Online, full-text of documents on Wisconsin's history and culture.
Formerly Wisconsin Heritage Online
Web of Science from Clarivate Analytics This link opens in a new window
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Searches 12,000+ scholarly journals in the sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities. Cited Reference Search locates articles that have cited an older document. Limited full-text access.
Includes the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present); the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index (1900-present for both); and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present).

A-Z Databases: English (First Year)
Find the best library databases for your research.

VIDEO: Finding and Using Library Databases

You’re given a research assignment and your instructor wants you to find scholarly articles. They suggest you look at a library database. What do you do?! Where do you start?! This video will briefly describe how databases can make searching for scholarly sources easier on you as a researcher and provide useful tips and tricks on how to get the most out of a database.

DIRECT LINK: https://youtu.be/NQUTEmVNrFA

Additional resources referenced in the video:
General Research Guide - libguides.marquette.edu/general
Contact a Librarian - marquette.edu/library/research/askus.php
All About FindIt@MU - youtu.be/A8XNPIbSEx8
RefWorks Citation Manager - libguides.marquette.edu/refworks