Finding articles - Preceptors - Social Sciences - LibGuides at Pacific University

Databases

* Don't try just one!

Search multiple databases - each database indexes a different collection of journals/sources.

* Think outside your search

Don't just use one specific search term - use terms that are more general, or are related to your topic.

* Change is good

If you don't have success at first, change your search terms. Try synonyms or related terms.

*Cheat!

When you find a good article, look at the subject terms or keywords that the database has used to index that article. Use those terms in a new search. Speak the database's language - it'll respond.

These are a sampling of the databases available in the criminal justice field. For more options, please see Criminal Justice, Law and Society databases.

Gale OneFile: Criminal Justice This link opens in a new window
Gale OneFile: Criminal Justice indexes major journals that cover law enforcement, criminology, security, criminal law and corrections, and more.
NCJRS (National Criminal Justice Reference Service (free site) This link opens in a new window
Contains summaries of over 189,000 U.S. and international publications, including federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, journal articles, audiovisual presentations, and unpublished research. The NCJRS Abstracts Database excludes most legal decisions, opinions, and statutes. The collection has been developed to meet the needs of criminal justice professionals, researchers, policymakers, and technical and legal experts. Unique elements of the collection include agency produced documents and final grant reports of Office of Justice Programs sponsored research. Documents are either written in English or have an English-language summary.

This is one database related to public health. For more options, please see the Public Health databases.

Other

PubMed - MEDLINE (free site) This link opens in a new window
Be sure to use this link to PubMed. You can access Pacifi'c full-text journals using this link.
CINAHL with Full Text This link opens in a new window
CINAHL is the world's most comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 610 journals indexed in CINAHL. Of those, 317 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search, Health Source, or Nursing & Allied Health Collection.

Rand Health Publications
For more than 50 years, RAND has been working to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis. RAND Health continues that tradition, advancing understanding of health and health behaviors, and examining how the organization and financing.
PolicyArchive
A project created by the Center for Governmental Studies and the Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis Library. This is a "digital archive of global, non-partisan public policy research... collect and disseminate summaries and full texts, videos, reports, briefs, and multimedia material of think tank, university, government, and foundation-funded policy research.

These are a sampling of the databases available in the social work field. For more options, please see the Social Work databases.

Gale Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Gale Academic OneFile contains peer-reviewed articles that cover the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, theology, literature, and more.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Premier indexes over 13,000 periodicals with coverage in the social sciences, humanities, education, physical sciences, technology, medicine, etc. Full text is available for nearly 5,000 titles.