History 356: Finding Scholarly Articles
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, core history databases for scholarly articles 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.
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.
Additional databases:
Expanded Academic Index (1980-Present)
Multi-disciplinary index to scholarly academic and general interest periodicals.
Alternative Press Archive (1969-1990) and Alternative Press Index (1991-Present)
Database indexing articles published in about 250 alternative, radical and left publications. Created by the Alternative Press Center.
Gender Watch (1971-Present)
Database of publications focusing on gender issues. Includes references to scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, n-g-o and special reports.
Women's Studies International (1972-Present)
Covers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies and related areas. Includes references to journals, newspapers, book chapters, reports, dissertations, and more.
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe - Legal Articles - Database that provides full-text access to law reviews.
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (1981-Present ) - An index to law books and articles in legal periodicals.
Locating Articles
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.