Use databases to find articles. You can search a database by key words, by author, by journal name and other ways depending on where you are starting and what you need to find.
Here are some of the CORE databases that cover Rural Sociology journals and issues:
Social Science Research Network (mega site part free, part fee)
Google Scholar may also be useful for your research. The advantage is that it is extremely broad and interdisciplinary. The disadvantage is that the results can be chaotic and hard to control. Think of Google Scholar not as a replacement for but rather a complement to the libraries databases.
There are many other databases that might be of use depending on the focus of your topic. If you are looking at gender issues, economic aspects, health related issues, or government policy aspects, for instance, you will want to take a look at the literature of those fields. All of these categories have their own specialized, core databases. To get to these other databases, go to the MU Libraries home page click on the gold tab, Databases, and then Databases by Subject. You will see that there are lots of other possibilities such as Women's & Gender Studies, Economics, Environmental Science, Health & Medicine and Government & Law.
