ENGL 201: Intermediate Composition - Jacoby, Lindsay (Fall 2024) : Find Articles

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: 

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

Use the Browse by Subject/Type page to discover databases that cover your media's topic.

Go to the Introductory Databases page to find good starting databases in over 15 subject areas.

Visit the Top 10 Databases page to quickly access a selection of popularly-used databases. 

Are you struggling to find a conversation to follow or a research question within a conversation?  These databases cover current issues.  Browsing them can give you ideas on topics that are currently being debated.  Most of the articles in these databases are NOT scholarly.

CQ Researcher (Current Issues)

• Weekly in-depth summaries of current affairs and social issues with background histories, chronologies, differing viewpoints, relevant legislation, and further reading suggestions.
• To browse topics:
  1. Scroll to "Browse By." The tab "Topics" should be outlined.
  2. Click a broad topic area. The list of topics that appears will be sorted by how recently CQ Researcher produced a report on that topic.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context

• Topic overviews, viewpoint articles, statistics, primary documents, and full text magazine and newspaper articles related to controversial social issues.
• To browse topics
  1. Click "Browse issues" in the upper right corner.
  2. Issues are listed alphabetically.

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

• Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.
  • art AND feminism 
• Use OR to combine similar words or phrases to find either of the words or phrases.
  • AI OR "artificial intelligence"
• Use quotation marks to find words as a phrase
  • "culturally relevant pedagogy"
• Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied ends of words.
  • disab* will find disabilitiy, disabilities, and disabled 
• Review "subject headings" or "descriptors" to identify additional and useful search terms.
• Apply limits or filters to your results (by date, document type, or other). 

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.