Step One - Plan your paper: Research Paper Navigator
Step Two - Set up RefWorks to organize and format your citations: more info
Step Three - Research
If you want to find information about someone (i.e. literary criticism of an author, biographical information), try a Subject search.
Example Subject Searches
• James, Henry
• James, Alice
• James Family
If you are searching for information on topics such as spiritualism or governesses, try a Keyword search.
Use the connectors AND, OR, or NOT to join more than one topic/keyword.
Example Keyword Searches
• Spiritualism and United States and history
• (spiritualism or occult or supernatural) and united states and history
• governess and Victoria**
Note: In the Library Catalog two asterisks ** are needed for truncation, whereas in many databases only one asterisk * is needed--but ALWAYS CHECK THE HELP SCREEN IN EVERY DATABASE to learn how to do the best (and fastest) searches!
To search for articles using the library databases, go to the Tisch Library Website and select Databases and Articles under Searching. Type in the name of the database in the search box or use the A-Z list to locate it.
| Use the following collections to find articles about your topic. |
- Academic OneFile - Includes over 8,000 peer-reviewed journals, the majority in full-text. Extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects. Full text articles available in both PDF and HTML.
- MLA International Bibliography - An international index to books and journals on the modern languages and literatures, including linguistics and folklore.
- America: History and Life - Scholarly literature on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada. The Advanced Search feature allows you to limit your search by time period.
- Historical Abstracts -Scholarly literature in history from 1450 to the present. Does not include the United States and Canada. The Advanced Search feature allows you to limit your search by time period.
- JSTOR-A fully searchable database containing the back issues of scholarly journals in history, film studies, sociology, literature and other fields.
| Use the following collections to find newspaper articles, newsletters, pamphlets, etc. from the 19th century. |
- America's Historical Newspapers - Contains hundreds of historic newspapers listed in Clarence Brigham's authoritative bibliography and in additional subsequent bibliographies with an emphasis on newspapers that began publication before 1820. Can narrow by year, time period, and article types (news/opinion, letters, advertisements, etc.)
- American Periodicals Series Online (1740-1900) - Includes special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals.
- New York Times Online Archive (1851-3 years before the current date) - Includes full-text and full-image articles dating back to the first issue of the NYT in 1851; the collection includes digital reproductions of every page from every issue—cover to cover.
- If you want to search for books on your topic beyond what's available at the Tufts University Libraries use WorldCat. You can access this database on the Databases & Articles page.
- If you want to borrow a book that is not available at Tufts University Libraries, follow these steps:
- Search the Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog by clicking on its link along the top menu of the Library Catalog. This catalog contains the book holdings at most of the BLC libraries. Users can directly request books through the catalog and pick up the books at Tisch Library.
- If the book is not available through the BLC Virtual Catalog, Submit an online request through the document delivery service - ILLIAD. Users are notified when the material arrives at Tisch. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.
- Articles not available in full-text through our libraries' databases and print collections can be requested through ILLiad. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.
- You can also use ILLiad directly within the databases.
The database only gives me a citation, or just an abstract. How do I find the full text?
- Use
, OR (if it doesn't seem to be working):
- look up the journal title (not the article title) by using the JOURNAL TITLE search option in the library catalog to find out if we own it electronically or in print. Be sure to check the range of dates we own before running to the shelves!
Is a journal I've found scholarly/peer-reviewed/refereed?
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