College Libraries: Watertown area classes: Articles

Articles - what are they?

An article is a written piece from a publication such as a journal, magazine or newspaper.
Faculty expect edited pieces from a valid publisher; information on the web from companies or individuals and wikipedia are usually unacceptable
Faculty may require articles of a particular type, i.e. newspaper, popular magazine, or scholarly journal.
Access to articles is provided through licensed databases on the library website. These databases collect articles from many publications.
Some of the most useful of these databases for your discipline are listed to the right. Others are found in our A-Z database list.

Try a title or keyword search on your topic.
Look for useful "subject" or "descriptor" words. These will either be in a list on the results page, or you may need to look at a number of individual records.
Go back to the search screen and search BY SUBJECT/DESCRIPTOR (not by title/keyword) using the words you discovered in step 2.
Be sure to take advantage of:
- Boolean connectors (AND, OR, NOT)
- Truncation/Wildcard (educat*)
- Phrase searching ("childhood obesity")
When you find an item you want, use ArticleLinker to get it.

Find the most relevant databases using our A-Z Databases page.

Choose your area from the subjects drop-down (e.g. "Education" or "Business") and choose "Articles" from the database types drop-down.

Search hint: To limit to journal articles:
- Click the Scholarly/Peer reviewed limit box on the search screen

Look for position-taking pieces and/or analyses of issues in:

Opposing Viewpoints from Gale in Context This link opens in a new window
Covers current social issues. Includes viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles.
Points of View Reference Center This link opens in a new window
A full text database designed to provide students with a series of controversial essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Browse or search for topics.

Other sources that cover controversy include Public Agenda, ProCon.org, and Policy Archive.

Browse a list of our education journals - both print and online, or
Use our Search for Journals by Title tool to check for the availability, online or in paper, of a particular magazine or journal.

Citation Linker
Only need to fill in "Journal", "Volume", "Issue", "Start Page" and "Date" (year) - will 'try' to find with even less information

Full Text in database - You will see one of these symbols - click on it:

Full Text elsewhere? Searches other databases, shows a link to Potsdam's ILLiad if not online.