Module 3: Finding Articles

Frequently referred to as the invisible or deep web -- as opposed to the free web -- Healey Library's subscription Databases provide well organized and highly selective coverage of scholarly journals.

Some databases contain scholarly journals, exclusively. Others have a mix of scholarly journals, popular magazines, newspapers and other material.

To find scholarly articles in a library database:

• Go to the Healey Library homepage
• Click on Databases List from the menu on the left
• Select a database by title, subject or material type.
• If you are off-campus, you will be prompted to enter your UMass Boston email and password
• If there is an option, select Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly Journal
• Type your keywords in the search box 
• In the results list, look for PDF or full text links to the article title
• Click on the link to access the full article

To find scholarly articles in UMBrella:

• From the Healey Library homepage, type your keywords into the UMBrella search box
  • For example: for articles about child abuse, type “child abuse” in the search box. Quotation marks around a phrase will search for that exact phrase.
• Then select Articles under Material Type
• Use the Availability filter to:
  • limit your results to articles that are immediately available, by checking Full Text Online
  • limit to peer-reviewed articles, by checking Peer-reviewed Journals
• Click on an article title that interests you
• Look under Find Online to see how you can access the article's full text
• Click one of the links
• If you are off campus, you will need to enter your campus username and password

VALUE

• High quality articles that are free.

FAST

• Instead of spending time combing through screen after screen of Google results, database content has been evaluated by scholars and experts for accuracy, etc. 

CONVENIENT

• You can search library databases online from your home/office 24/7.

Selecting which database to use can be confusing. If you don't know where to start, try UMBrella or a multidisciplinary database. These databases feature articles on a wide variety of topics.

To find databases in a particular subject area:

1. Go to Databases List
2. Choose a subject in the drop-down menu, All Subjects. 

Another method for selecting databases is to use the Research Guides. Every major, minor, or subject offered by UMass-Boston has its own Research Guide.

Research Guide is a web resource, created by librarians, to help you do research.

Here are several links to subject specific Research Guides.