What is a Database?
A database is an online index to magazine and journal articles, book chapters, etc. Databases often provide access to full-text of articles.
You use a database to save yourself time and effort! A database scans thousands of journal and magazine issues to find articles that match your topic, so you don't have to look at individual pages and issues . It shows exactly which issue has the article(s) on your topic.
Use a database to find article information on your topic. You can use Discover@MU to determine whether the article(s) is available fulltext online or in print.
Use Interlibrary Loan to obtain copies of articles from other libraries.
The easiest way to select the best database is to use the a list of our databases (once you follow this link, click the tab for Databases by Subject. On the Subject databases page choose your subject area and click and you will get a list of databases that cover your subject.
Discover@MU is a multidisciplinary database tool that will have both popular and scholarly articles (as well as books) and are good places to start your research:
The following multidisciplinary database has only scholarly articles:
The following specialized databases have only scholarly articles:
This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than an abundance of journals and covers extensive academic disciplines and provides comprehensive content, including PDF back-files, videos, and searchable cited references.
Contains in-depth, analytical reporting on the most current and controversial issues. Provides extensive background information and discussion of the pro’s and con’s.
Cover-to-cover digital reproductions of every issue (1851-2020). Full page-image and full-text searching.
Contains comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines.
When searching for articles, it can be important to start with a search strategy. Please see the tab for search strategies to learn how to create a search strategy for your topic.
If you have an article citation, use the Find a Specific Article link to access the full-text of the article.
If you don't see a link to the PDF of an article, click on the Find It @MU icon 
to find full-text. Check out our FindIt@MU guide for detailed instructions.
A great next step is to reach out to a librarian using the "Ask Us" button on the top right side of the screen.
You can also find several other ways to contact the library on our "Contact Us" page.
If you are not finding the full text of the article you're looking for in Discover@MU or when using the Find a Specific Article tool. The next step should be to check Google Scholar for freely available access.
If Google Scholar does not have the article freely available in full text, likely you can still get access to that article through interlibrary loan.
