A database is simply a collection of articles. These can be from scholarly publications, newspapers, magazines and other sources. You search the database by using keywords. See the Database Search Tips tab for more details on creating your search.
You may not find anything relevant in your first search or two. Try different combinations of keywords, or try different a database.
Discover@MU allows you to search millions of items from a single interface. Search physical library holdings, database content, digitized collections, and more. Use the large search box on the library's homepage.
Getting too many results?
Not getting enough results?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
There are many other databases that might be of use depending on the focus of your topic. If you are looking at gender issues, health concerns or education reform, for instance, you may want to take a look at the literature outside of Political Science. All of these topics have their own specialized, core databases. To get to these other databases, go to the MU Libraries home page, click on Find a Specific Database, and then Databases by Subject. You will see that there are lots of other possibilities such as Women's & Gender Studies, Education, and Health & Medicine.
