COM ARTS 272: Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Fall 2025) : Find Articles

Locating Article Databases

The following are different ways to access databases on the Library website for searching for articles:

Browse By Subject/Type
Organization of databases by subject or discipline
Introductory Databases
Short list of databases by subject
Top 10 Databases
10 most popular databases
UW Libraries Search Box – Dropdown Options
Options allow searching a subset of the Libraries' resources (books, articles, journals, etc.)

Communication & Mass Media Complete
Database covering advertising, marketing, film/video, game studies, journalism, communication, mass media, linguistics, rhetoric, language, logic, and other closely related fields.
PsycINFO (Psychological Abstracts)
Database covering the field of psychology, behavioral science and mental health, including the psychological aspects of medicine, nursing, education, physiology, business, law, and more.

Google Scholar
Scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research from a wide variety of sources.
Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier is a general academic index with almost 3,000 magazines and journals from every academic discipline and provides the full-text of more than 1,200.

Text and Video Tutorial

Database Search Strategies

Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.
- friends AND communication
Use OR to combine similar words or phrases to find either of the words or phrases.
- friends OR peers
Use quotation marks to find words as a phrase
- "college students"
Use an asterisk ( * ) to find varied ends of words .
- friend* will find friend, friends and friendships
Try searching for terms in publication title.
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).

Look for a PDF to download or an HTML full text link. You may need to select an Access options button and drop-down menu.

If you do not find a PDF or other full text option, follow 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.