ILS 200: Critical Thinking and Expressions (Fall 2024) : Find Articles
Register for Free Access to NYTimes.com and WSJ.com through UW-Madison
Major Newspaper Databases
Locating Article Databases
We recommend accesssing databases through Libraries Website: doing so ensures you have access to all the content the libraries have paid for. You will run in to fewer paywalls.
The following are different ways to access databases on the Library website for searching for articles:
- Browse By Subject/TypeOrganization of databases by subject or discipline and source type
- Introductory DatabasesShort list of databases by subject
- Top 10 Databases10 most popular databases
- UW Libraries Search Box – Dropdown Options (text tutorial)Options allow searching a subset of the Libraries' resources (books, articles, journals, etc.)
Background Information on Current Issues
- CQ ResearcherWeekly in-depth summaries of current affairs and social issues with background histories, chronologies, differing viewpoints, relevant legislation, and further reading suggestions.
- Opposing Viewpoints in ContextTopic overviews, viewpoint articles, statistics, primary documents, and full text magazine and newspaper articles related to controversial social issues.
Multi-Subject Databases
- Academic Search PremierAcademic Search Premier is a general academic index that indexes almost 3,000 magazines and journals from every academic discipline and provides the full-text of more than 1,200.
- Google ScholarSearch for scholarly journal articles, books, and reports from all broad areas of research. Not all sources are peer-reviewed and scholarly. Be sure to access this database from this page to link to full text content in library databases through Find It.@UW-Madison links.
- Articles SearchSearch across multiple databases at once. Search includes some but not all databases. Use options at top of search results page to refine a search.
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.
Why use article databases?
What are article databases?
- Tools, many paid for by the libraries, that allow you to search and find sources.
- Contain descriptions of articles in a standardized format.
- Often contain abstracts of articles.
- Often contain the full text of articles.
Why use article databases?
- Humans have set the parameters of what's included in these databases
- what publications are covered, based on credibility and general topics of publications
- how far back coverage goes.
- Many LLMs are only trained on materials that are available for free. Many quality articles are available by subscription only. Databases serve as gateways to these articles available by subscription only.
- Many LLMs are currently trained on older materials. Most article databases will have more current content.
Search Tips
- Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order - usually narrows search, reduces results
- artificial intelligence AND college admissions
- Use OR to combine similar words or synonyms or variations - usually broadens search, increases results
- artificial intelligence OR machine learning
- Use quotation marks ( " ") to search words as a phrase - usually narrows search, reduces results
- "artificial intelligence"
- Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied endings of words and singular and plural forms - usually broadens search, increases results
- colleg* finds college, colleges, collegiate
- Look at Subject Terms 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
For more search tips, see the Searching Databases tutorial.