CHICLA 501: Chican@ and Latin@ Social Movements in the U.S. (Spring 2022) : Database Search Strategies

• If you want to read the full text of article in a database, look for a link or button that says “Full Text,” “HTML Full Text,” “PDF Full Text”, "Linked Full Text", has an image of a document, or something similar. 
• If there is not a link to the full text, Select the Find It button. Clicking this button searches all of the UW-Madison Libraries databases.
  • If the full text is available online, click the link to get to the full text. 
  • If it is not available online, use the Look for Print and Other Formats in the Library Catalog to look for a print copy.
  • You can also Request a Copy of the article. Library staff will scan the article and send it to your email.  Typically, if the article is available on campus, it will take 1-3 days.  If the article is not available on campus, it will take 3-9 days. Right now, it is taking a bit longer than typical to get articles, but the service is still available.  There is no charge for this service.

The Searching Databases tutorial shows you how to search databases. 

• Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.  
  • Chicana AND Wisconsin
• Use OR to combine similar words or synonyms or variations
  • Chicana OR Latina OR Latinx
• Use quotation marks ( " ") to search words as a phrase
  • "labor activism" 
• Use truncation (*) to search for varied endings 
  • chican* to find chicana, chicano, chicanas, chicanos
• Look at Subjects to find additional keywords and use them to find relevant and specific results.
• Look for an option to limit to Scholarly Journals on the left side of search results in most databases