Gingrich Library: ART 244 -- Gender and the Visual Arts: Finding Articles

Why Use Library Databases?

What is a database?

The Albright College Library offers access to subscription databases. These databases generally give you easy access to magazine, newspaper, and journal articles. Most of these will be "full text" which means you get the complete article. They are called subscription databases because the Library subscribes, or pays money, in order to access them.

Why use a database?

There are advantages to using library research databases compared to the web. Databases are more focused and tailored to meet student's needs. The information tends to be:

Stable--if you found it once you can find it again.
Reliable--most information in databases is based on a print resource and has gone through a review process. Anyone can publish to the web.
Precise--you can refine your search to get close to the material you need. Compare searching 50 articles relevant to your search to 50 million from the Web.

In short, you should use library databases in order to quickly find relevant scholarly information that you can use in research papers or other course projects. We also have several library databases that include music, videos, and art! Take a look and you're sure to find something that relates to you!

Library databases:	Websites:
get their information from professionals or experts in the field.	can be written by anyone regardless of expertise.
contain published works where facts are checked.	content is not necessarily checked by an expert.
are easy to cite in a bibliography and may create the citation for you.	often don't provide the information necessary to create a complete citation.
can help you narrow your topic or suggest related subjects.	often aren't organized to support student research needs.
are updated frequently and include the date of publication.	may not indicate when a page is updated.

Useful General Databases

ARTstor
ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. Coverage includes images from prehistoric times to the present day.

ARTstor digitizes and provides high-quality images from numerous museums, academic institutions, and private foundations. It comes with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.
Business Source Complete
A scholarly business database providing both bibliographic and fulltext items with indexing and abstracts going back as far as 1886.
Google Scholar

An academic version of Google providing a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Coverage dates vary.

Peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations are available. Google Scholar helps identify the most relevant research across the scholarly world. Google Scholar can be used to search several Albright subsciption databases, e.g., JSTOR, Project Muse, ScienceDirect, etc.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a shared digital library that includes the fulltext of more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume published. Coverage varies depending on the journal title.

Due to "moving wall" agreements with the publishers, JSTOR does not include current issues of journals; the most recently published issue of any current journal will not appear in JSTOR until 1-5 years after the publishing date.

Lion Search
One stop for searching. Find articles, reports, books, and more.

Project Muse
Provides full-text access to more than 400 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. Coverage varies by publication; the earliest date of inclusion is 1990.

ART 244 -- Gender and the Visual Arts: Finding Articles

Why Use Library Databases?

Useful General Databases

Video: What Are Databases and Why You Need Them