To find scholarly articles on a topic, you will need to use a periodical index. Most of the Libraries' indexes are available as online databases, but in some cases you will need to consult a print index for older materials. Each periodical index focuses on a specific subject area or body of literature. Because most indexes are produced at a national level, they may include many magazines and journals not available at Williams. See below for more information about locating articles at Williams and borrowing from other libraries.
For this course, databases for scholarly articles and law reviews are:
America: History and Life (1964-Present )
An index to scholarly articles, dissertations, and book reviews on the history and culture of North America (United States and Canada) from prehistory to the present. Covers approximately 1,800 journals.
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (1981-Present )
An index to law books and articles in legal periodicals.
JSTOR (Coverage Varies)
Digital archive of core scholarly journals in arts, humanities, general science and social sciences. Historical collection covering complete run of each journal from its inception to 1-5 years ago.
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe - Legal Articles (Coverage Varies)
Database that provides full-text access to law reviews.
While searching articles databases, you will want to determine whether the Williams College Libraries own the journals containing the articles you wish to read.
Many databases have this
icon. When you click on the icon in the database, it will attempt to find an electronic version of the text in our collection. If it doesn't find an electronic version, it will give you a screen with a link to FRANCIS and Williams ILL. The FRANCIS link sends a pre-formatted search into FRANCIS to find print or other electronic subscriptions in our collection. The Williams ILL link provides an automatically filled-in interlibrary loan request form to get a copy from another library.
If the database you are using does not have the Find Text icon, you can do a journal title search in FRANCIS or use Citation Linker.