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Business and Economics Librarian
Seattle University
2nd Floor Research Services
Top Databases
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowPremier database not only for business and economics, but also for Public Administration and Nonprofit Literature. Search here for articles from scholarly as well as practitioner journals.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowSearch more than 13,300 periodicals, including full text for nearly 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. It features a mix of interdisciplinary scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers and books.
- Proquest Research LibraryFrom business and political science to literature and psychology, ProQuest Research Library™ provides one-stop access to a wide range of popular academic subjects. The database includes more than 4,000 titles—nearly 2,800 in full text—from 1971 forward. It features a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull text of scholarly journals representing most major academic disciplines including 24 of the top journals in Public Policy and Administration. Access from first issue to within 3-5 years of present.
Other Databases to try
Working on a topic which may require the use of specialized discipline databases.
- CINAHL with Full Text This link opens in a new windowCINAHL Plus with Full Text is the premiere index for the nursing literature. It provides indexing for more than 2,700 journals with full text for more than 300 journals. Also covers alternative and complementary medicine, biomedicine, diagnostic ultrasound, gerontology, and public health.
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowCreated by the National Library of Medicine and freely available via the internet and international in scope. It comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from biology, medicine, nursing, and life sciences journals as well as journals from many other fields. Citations may include links to full text content.
(To order an article not owned by SU, work from the full PubMed article record. Click on the SU Full Text Search button in the upper right corner of the screen to find an interlibrary loan request form.) - EconLit with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThe premier database for economic literature. This resource provides a comprehensive index of economic journals, books, working papers, and dissertations.
- Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window?Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text contains more than 200,000 records selected from the most important sources within the discipline. Subject areas covered include: criminology; criminal justice; criminal law and procedure; corrections and prisons; police and policing; criminal investigation; forensic sciences and investigation; history of crime; substance abuse and addiction; probation and parole
- Polling the Nations This link opens in a new windowProvides public opinion polls containing the full text of 350,000 questions and responses from 14,000 surveys conducted in the U.S. and 100 other countries.
- SocINDEX with/Full Text This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive sociology research database with coverage of not only sociology, but also anthropology, criminal justice, economic development, ethnic and racial studies, gender studies, social psychology, social work, substance abuse and other areas. It provides indexing for more than 600 journals with full text available for more than 300 journals.
- Education Research Complete This link opens in a new windowIndexing and abstracts for more than 1,500 journals. Full text for more than 750 journals, and includes full text for more than 100 books and monographs, and for numerous education-related conference papers.
- Issues & Controversies This link opens in a new windowSummarizes current issues and controversies in political, economic, social and scientific topics. From Facts on File.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowGood starting point for research on "hot topics" in the news including science, education, politics and economics.
- Sage Knowledge This link opens in a new windowFull text reference works published by Sage Publisher.
Using Databases
When using the databases, note scope and coverage. Most public administration journals are indexed in Business Source Complete. JSTOR also contains a number of Public Administration Journals, but the available fulltext issues are often embargoed for the last 5 years. If you have an interdisciplinary topic, it may be covered in other databases, so be sure to think about how a discipline might approach your topic and what specific language the discipline uses to descripe its contents. JSTOR contains scholarly articles conly; Academic Search Complete and ProQuest contain multiple formats
1. Design your search strategy.
2. Choose a database.
3. Search. Note number of results.
4. Search too broad, narrow your search. Identify additional keywords and/or qualifiers.
5. Research is a process. Be ready to refine search with additional keywords or another search strategy.
Search boxes are set up to assume you are using “and” for your terms. Ability to add rows and within a line string terms with the same operator. For example, you might have youth or adolescent or adolescence on one line. Second and third concepts would go on the next two lines.
Look for a controlled vocabulary which allows searching by descriptor, the subject headings assigned to the article. There is usually a thesaurus of that vocabulary.
One way to find more sources is to follow the references in a publication. If you can find a chapter in a textbook on your topic, often there will be valuable references that you can mine to find additional references. Once you find these references you can track additional sources. This snowball method of research is one way to find relevant sources.