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OUTSIDE THE U OF M

Quick! HOW DO I LOOK UP ARTICLES?

Click on the Libraries home page (www.lib.umn.edu)

Click on Subjects

Select a broad subject (History, General Aspects, for example)

Select an article database

Search your topic in the database

If you see a icon near an article listing, click on it to help locate the article.

If there is no Find It icon, open a new window (control-N) and search the journal name in MNCAT.

 

MORE ABOUT ARTICLES

Articles are published as part of a longer, ongoing publication called a periodical. That makes finding them a bit more complicated than books, because sometimes you have to focus on the article itself, but other times you have to focus on the publication in which it appeared.

Finding articles requires several steps:

1. Identify the best article index to search for articles on a subject. The index must cover the time period you are researching. Be clear about whether you want the articles to be:

a.) Articles published during the historical time period (often for primary source material) or

b.) Articles published after the time period but the article discusses the history time period (secondary sources)

2. Search the selected article index using the best search terms. This may take longer than you expected!

3. Look carefully through the listings and abstracts (summaries) of the article listings that your search retrieves.

4. Check FIND IT or MNCAT to see if the library owns the journal in which the article was published. It is at this point that you need to pay more attention to the title of the journal, magazine or newspaper, as opposed to the the title and content of the article.

MORE ARTICLE LINKS

 

Page Coordinator: Susan Gangl