InfoGuides: ENGH 101: Composition: Find Articles

General Searching Tips

Library databases are the best place to go for scholarly information: using our databases means you go through our subscriptions and will have full-text access to way more information!
Using keywords is the most efficient way to tell the databases what you need. Keywords are the main ideas of your search, narrowed down into single words or short phrases. Our databases do better with keywords than they do with full sentences!
- Example: Searching for social media and sleep will return more relevant results than the effects of social media on sleep.
Remember: research is an iterative process! This means you'll likely be going back and forth, using different databases, and trying different keywords until you find the ones that bring you the information you want!
Keep an open mind throughout the process. You might learn something that makes you feel differently about your topic or make you want to change your idea! Don't just search for articles to support a stance you already have. Instead, look for more information that will help you learn more about your topic of interest.
Ask for help! The library is here to help you with any part of the research process! You can find help lots of ways, including:

Recommended Databases

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
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Provides full-text, peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracts for monographs, reports, and conference proceedings. Features content going back as far as 1887. Tutorial for the Academic Search Complete database.
ProQuest Research Library This link opens in a new window
Provides access to more than 4,000 titles from general reference databases, including a diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, and magazines covering over 150 academic disciplines. Tutorial for the ProQuest Research Library database.
Newspaper Source Plus This link opens in a new window
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Provides full-text access to national and international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times (London), as well as selective full-text for various U.S regional newspapers. In addition, it offers full-text television and radio news transcripts from ABC News, CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, and National Public Radio. Tutorial for the Newspaper Source Plus database.

Need More Options?

Database Portal
Need more specific subject databases? Our database portal organizes the Libraries' databases by subject.

How Do I Read the Article?

Most resources you find will have full text access: you should be able to get to the PDF or HTML content right away. For those where you can't find full text, follow these steps to see if we have the article in another database:

Click on the MasonLink button if you see it in your search results.
Search the E-Journal Finder by the title of the journal.
If Mason doesn't subscribe to a database containing the full-text article you want, you may need to request it through the WRLC Consortium Loan Service or Interlibrary Loan (ILL).