Databases to get you started researching literary topics:
A tool that brings together Gale's premier literary databases: Literature Criticism, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Something about the Author.
An archival full-text multi-disciplinary journal database, covering over 60 academic disciplines in more than 2400 scholarly journals.
A comprehensive literary reference which offers information from over 1,000 books and monographs, literary encyclopedias, and hundreds of literary journals.
Modern Language Association's citations to scholarship in literature (criticism and theory), modern languages, linguistics, folklore, and drama, including film, opera, radio, television, and theater.
Full text of over 600 scholarly journals and over 30,000 books in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
Full-text access to articles from over 7,000 journals (including nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals), magazines, and reference sources.
A complete bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Indexes over 2,000 English-language journals published worldwide.
An archival full-text multi-disciplinary journal database, covering over 60 academic disciplines in more than 2400 scholarly journals.
Full text for scholarly articles, reference books, monographs, and conference papers.
Full text of over 600 scholarly journals and over 30,000 books in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
Newspapers from ethnic and minority presses, covering 1982-present.
A tool that brings together Gale's premier literary databases: Literature Criticism, Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Something about the Author.
Biographical and bibliographical information on 120,000+ modern authors, including novelists, poets, screenwriters, journalists and other nonfiction writers.
Contains thousands of biographies of authors, artists, film directors, Nobel Prize winners, American reformers, musicians, and composers.
Andersen Library subscribes to many databases that can be used to locate periodical (journal, magazine and newspaper) articles, as well as book chapters, dissertations and the like. Other databases the library has contain legal cases, business information, and more. Online databases and Research@UWW are two ways to find recent articles. If you need older articles, or cannot find any articles on your topic using Research@UWW or online databases, Ask a Librarian in person, over the phone, by email, or through chat for assistance. Databases and Research@UWW list articles that may or may not be owned by the Library. Databases, Research@UWW, and the full text content they contain can be accessed both on and off-campus.
Below are a few databases you may wish to search individually. Find more by selecting the Articles/Databases tab from the box on the Library homepage and choosing a subject or database name.
Sample searches in library databases:
(miscegenation OR interbreeding) AND caucasia
caucasia AND danzy AND senna
Most databases have some full text articles and/or chapters in addition to citations. To access the full text there will be a button or text to click on that says something like: PDF, HTML, or Full Text.
When an article is not available in that database, use button/link to determine whether and where the UWW libraries have it. One of several things will happen when you click on it.
If you have a citation for something UWW does not have access to AND are not in a database or Research@UWW, use the Journals Search (also on the libraries' homepage) to determine whether and where the Library has a particular periodical (journal, magazine, newspaper, etc.). If:
UW-Whitewater has it, click on the link provided to the periodical and then search the periodical for the article title. UW-Whitewater does NOT have it, go to the library homepage, select My Account, and log in.
In the Get It section you will see other ways to access the full text of the article. Either:
UW-Whitewater has the item physically in one of the UWW libraries. If at your campus, you will go to the listed collection to get it. If at the other campus, use the "Request" option to have it sent to your campus. Some people who fit this set of criteria can use ILL to have articles or book chapters scanned as a PDFs for you to access online. UW-Whitewater does NOT have the needed item in one of the UWW libraries. Select Please sign in for more request options --> Sign in. Select UW-W Students / Staff Login >, and then Log in. Complete the multifactor authentication through Duo. Click on the We Can Get it for You (Document Delivery) for articles and chapters or UW-Request for books, media, government and other items.
How? Check out the How to Use Find It and the Journals Search guide or watch this How to Use Find It video
Databases and the full text content they contain can be accessed both on and off-campus.
The first time you click on a database name, you'll be prompted to log into the proxy server with your UW-W Net-ID and password (just like you do to access your UW-W email, WINS account, and Canvas courses). After a while of non-use you will be timed out. Just sign in again.
If you have issues logging in or accessing online full text articles and books, please check the Troubleshooting section of our Get Help page for known issues. The three most common solutions are:
Note: Research@UWW does not require that you sign in at first. However, you should sign in anyway after your first search for seamless access to more full text and to Request/UW Request borrowing.
Another resource you can use to find scholarly sources is Google Scholar. It is searched the same way as regular Google, but you will find better quality materials when using it. Google Scholar primarily finds scholarly journal articles, but also finds books, book chapters, dissertations, and other sources published by academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, etc. You won't find everything that was created ever, or even everything that the UW-Whitewater libraries have, but it can be a useful tool.
On the UW-Whitewater campuses, Google Scholar is set up to automatically interact with Find It, a tool that will find you the full text of articles and books we have or offer you a way to borrow them for free if we do not. However, Find It does not show up for every citation that appears in Google Scholar. If no Find It link appears, try the Journal Search to see whether and where we have a particular journal, magazine or newspaper and what dates are available.
Do not pay for articles you find through Google Scholar. We can get them for you for free using ILL (interlibrary loan)!
To set up the Find It/Google Scholar interactivity on your personal desktop computer, laptop, tablet, etc. follow these instructions:
Have you found the citation for an article you want in another article's bibliography or on Google Scholar? You can use the libraries' Journals Search to see whether and where the Whitewater libraries has the periodical (journal, magazine, or newspaper) that the article came from. Start by typing the periodical title (not the article title) in the box below. This is also available from the libraries' homepage.
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