One of the best ways to find information on any topic is to read a journal article on that subject. Journal articles are written by scholars, researchers or other experts and are published in scholarly journals. Journals are published by professional organizations with a scholarly or research-oriented mission for an academic or professional audience. For example, the American Medical Association publishes the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Most, but not all, scholarly journals are also peer-reviewed journals, which means that articles published in them have been edited and approved by experts in the field.
OK- scholarly journals are what you want. How do you get to them? By using a journal database.
A journal database is a list of the articles arranged by subject. Databases usually focus on one subject and will list articles on whatever topic you choose. The Douglas Library has over 100 electronic journal databases that will guide you to scholarly journals in any topic you can imagine.
The library has created a list of databases in popular subject areas. These guides can be found at http://library.csu.edu/sguides/. In addition, the library also has linked a complete list of all of the library’s databases along with descriptions of their content.
If your instructor has suggested a particular database, use that one. If you are unsure about which database would be best for your topic, please ask at the reference desk. We would be glad to help.
Once you have selected a database, use it to find journal articles on your topic. Break your topic into concepts or ideas and place one idea or concept on each line of the search box. Click on search to retrieve articles that contain all of your concepts or ideas.
You will get a list of results made up of either citations or full text articles. A citation indicates the author of the article, the title of the article, the name of the journal, the volume of the journal, and the date and pagination of the article – all the information you need to find the article here at Chicago State or at another library. If your results include full text articles, the entire article will appear on the computer screen. You may read the article from the computer screen, print the article on our laser printer (10 cents a page) with a library photocopy card, or you may e-mail the article to yourself to read or print later.
To find out if the Douglas Library has a specific journal in electronic format, click on http://atoz.ebsco.com/home.asp?ID=cgcsu. Once there, enter the journal’s title in the FIND box at the upper right hand of the page.
Good luck and please stop by the reference desk if you have any questions about finding journals or journal articles.
