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LING 200 Harmon: Find Articles

A guide to library resources for the study of linguistics.

Using Library Databases

Databases provide access to published materials in:

  • magazines
  • scholarly articles
  • newspapers
  • books
  • and other valuable sources

How to Find Articles

To Access the databases go to the library homepage:

  1. Click on the Articles tab.
  2. Click on the database name you want to access from the Browse Databases From A-Z pull down menu. 
  3. You can also search the databases by subject such as Literature.

From off campus you will need to authenticate with your library card number and pin (last for digits of your phone number).

Article Databases

What is a Scholarly Article?

Scholarly articles are written by experts in the field and, additionally, peer reviewed by a panel experts in the field.  They tend to include a lot of research and data, and the information in the article is backed up by a list of references. 

Example of a Journal with Scholarly Articles

American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Popular articles are often written by journalists for a general audience and are not reviewed by experts in the field.  Popular articles rarely include references.

Example of a Magazine with Popular Articles

cover of people magazine with a picture of justin bieber

 

Open Access Journals

Database Search Tips

AND requires all specified words to appear in each item
         e.g. semantics AND metaphor
 
OR    requires any of the specified words to appear in each item
         e.g. homograph* OR homonym* OR homophone*
 
NOT  excludes terms not desired
          e.g. syntactic change NOT morphological change
                
Combining ideas
       e.g. (dialect* OR regionalism*) AND (English language) AND (Unites States OR California OR bay area)
      
  •        prioritize your concepts to begin your search with the most important one
  •        consider additional concepts to use, if necessary, to reduce or expand retrieval
  •        if the database has a thesaurus, either online or print, check for suggested terms