Guides: COM 491: Senior Seminar: Databases & Journals

Library Database A-Z List

A-Z Library Databases
View the A-Z list of over 100 library databases.

Below are recommendations for best bet database to use for searching for peer-reviewed research in the field of Media Criticism. Remember, there there is no one perfect database for topics in this class. Think about the subject area of your "big question" and see if there is a subject specific database to search.

How to search library databases.

Watch this video to learn strategies for searching library databases for scholarly articles on your "big question" and artifact ideas.

Library Databases

START WITH THESE

Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Ultimate offers access to resources cited in key subject indexes. The combination of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos meets the needs of scholars in virtually every discipline ranging from astronomy, anthropology, biomedicine, engineering, health, law and literacy to mathematics, pharmacology, women’s studies, zoology and more.
Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Supports quality research in areas related to communication and mass media. This includes both CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index, along with journals in communication, mass media, and closely-related fields of study. Contains indexing and abstracting for more than 570 journals and full text access to over 450 journals.
OneFile: Communications and Mass Media This link opens in a new window
Search over 400 Gale Academic OneFile journals for information focused on the communications field – advertising, public relations, linguistics and literature.
Formerly called Communications and Mass Media Collection

OTHER DATABASES

Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources—including thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. Includes extensive coverage in key subject areas such as biology, chemistry, economics, environmental science, history, marketing, political science, and psychology.
APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
World's largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Produced by the American Psychological Association, it includes more than 4 million bibliographic records and indexing of more than 2,500 journals.
Newspaper Source This link opens in a new window
Provides content from hundreds of U.S., international and regional newspapers. In addition, it offers television and radio news transcripts from major networks including CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, NPR and more.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive sociology research database that contains full text for more than 630 journals and magazines, as well as books, monographs, and conference papers. Covers various areas of study including gender studies, criminal justice, social psychology, racial studies, religion and social work.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statistics portal integrating statistics and other quantitative data on over 80,000 topics including media, business, finance, politics, and more.

Academic Journals

Browse Journal Finder
Find individual journals and search within specific publications.

BrowZine

Find Online Resources

Find Online Journals

Browse Journal Finder
Find individual journals and search within specific publications.

FINDING SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

What do you do when you see a citation in an article and you want to try to find that article for your own research? Watch this video to learn how you use a journal article's citation to find the article in print or online at Jenks Library.

Having trouble playing the video? Watch on the Jenks Library YouTube Channel.

How to search within Journals

Watch this video to learn how to search within journals for scholarly journal articles.

Interlibrary Loan for Articles

Interlibrary Loan: Article & Book Request
Can't find the article or book you're looking for at Gordon? Fill out the Interlibrary Loan request form and we'll track the article or book down for you!

Tips for Searching Library Databases

Identify Keywords

The building block of a library database search is keywords. Keywords are central ideas or terms within your research question or problem.

Boolean Search Operators

Once you have your keywords identified (2-3 is a good place to begin), you then need to connect them together in a way the database understands how to search. This is done using the Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT. Connecting keywords using these search operators creates a search string.

AND - narrow search, used to combine terms together and focus search results (college and artificial intelligence)
OR - broad search, used to includes results that contain similar or like words, such as synonyms (ChatGPT or artificial intelligence)
NOT - narrow search by exclusion, used to exclude results containing a particular keyword (gaming not gambling)

Enter Keywords in Database Search

Enter your keywords, connected with the appropriate Boolean operator.
Use the filters to narrow your results. Peer reviewed and full text are automatically selected, but you may want to narrow the results to those published in the last 10 years.

Using Search Results

Sort your search results by Date Newest so the most current information on a subject is at the top of your results.
Use the "Cited by" or "Cited References" features contained in many library databases to view a list of resources that have cited the particular article currently being viewed in their own work or are contained within the Reference list of the current article being viewed.

Do not limit your search to just one database. Instead look at a variety of databases both subject specific and interdisciplinary to make sure you are viewing the full scope of literature published on your topic.