GEOG 101: Introduction to Human Geography (Spring 2025) : Find Articles

Selecting and Searching Databases by Subject or Type

You can access databases from the library home page (library.wisc.edu). Use the dropdown menu at the Catalog button to navigate to Databases.

There are several ways to browse and select databases:

1) Search by the title of the database (for example, Academic Search).

2) Use the Browse by Subject/Type page to discover databases for sources that cover your research topic.

3) Visit the Top 10 Databases page to quickly access a selection of popular databases.

Here are some suggested databases to search.

Academic Search
Large multi-disciplinary database indexing popular periodicals and peer-reviewed journal sources.
Google Scholar
Multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly articles.
Note: Choosing Google Scholar from the library database menu will help you retrieve more full-text!
JSTOR
Archive of scholarly journals and e-books in the humanities, social sciences, sciences and mathematics. Geography coverage. Journal coverage is from volume 1 of each publication until 3-5 years ago.
Web of Science
Collection of databases that index scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, as published in journals, conference proceedings, symposia, and more. Includes citation network data.

Understanding the Peer Review Process

Scholarly articles undergo a peer review process before they are published. This means that experts in the field are invited by the journal editors to review the quality of the article, and make suggestions for improvements before publication.

This video explains the peer review process:

Peer Review in 3 minutes

Getting to the Full Article

Follow (Find It button) or the "Find It at UW Madison" link in most databases to:

access the full article (when available)
determine if the journal is available in print (Library Catalog)
request a copy of the article (PDF) if the full article is not available online (Request a Copy link)

If you already have a citation, use the Citation Search to find the full article.

Tips for Searching

Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.
- "affordable housing" AND geography
Use OR to combine similar words or phrases to find either of the words or phrases.
- renter OR homeowner
Use quotation marks to find words as a phrase.
- "housing market"
Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied ends of words.
- geograph* will find geography, geographic, and geographical
Try searching for words in the article's title (title field).
Review "subject headings" or "descriptors" to identify additional and useful search words.
Apply limits or filters to your results (by date, document type, or other).