The databases listed here may help you find and get access to newspaper articles, magazines articles, and scholarly journal articles about your topic. But how do you get started? 

1. Choose keywords that describe your topic and consider how different authors might describe the same topic. For example: (women OR gender) AND (recipe OR receipt) AND medic* 

2. Use the tools provided by the database to narrow your search by date, document type, and more.

3. Read the abstract or summary of the article to decide if it is relevant to your topic. 

4. If the article is relevant, make sure to save it! ZSR recommends saving it to Zotero (which will also help you cite it later in your paper!). You can also email it to yourself or copy the permalink (NOT the link in the browser bar!). 

Need help? Ask a librarian! 

FINDING SCHOLARLY JOURNAL ARTICLES 

To locate ZSR holdings for a specific journal (or magazine or newspaper), search for the title in Find a Journal. 

To search for articles on your topic, use the online databases listed below. Click on the PDF or linked full text to view the full article, or click on WFU Full Text Options to search our holdings for the article. 

Remember, if we don't have a journal or article you need, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan! 

BOOLEAN OPERATORS (AND/OR)

• AND : Tells the database to find all the terms [Example: women AND witchcraft]
• OR : Tells the database to search for any of these terms (good for use with synonyms and related terms) [Example: (women OR gender OR female)]

WILDCARDS/TRUNCATION

• Asterisk (*) : Tells the database to find all terms that share the same root word [Example: witch* = witch, witches, witchcraft]
• Question mark (?) : Use in the middle of a word to replace a letter [Example: wom?n = woman, women]

PHRASE SEARCHING

• Quotation marks : Tells the database to keep two or more terms together as a phrase [Example: "early modern"]

Sample search using all the search techniques above: (wom?n OR gender OR female) AND witch* AND ("early modern")