GSU Library Research Guides: Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Resources: Finding Articles

Philosophy Librarian / Humanities Instruction Librarian

Leslie Madden

she/her

Email Me

Contact:

Library South
Suite 542

404-413-2807

Subjects: English, World Languages & Cultures

Diversity Reading List (from the Minorities and Philosophy site)

Diversity Reading List

Search Hints

to search names as a phrase | ex: "sara ahmed"

as a wild card | ex: wom*n

AND between words to NARROW results | ex: ethics AND healthcare

OR between words to EXPAND results | ex: African American OR Black

Locating Articles

If a database does not provide full text for an article, it will often include just the citation that tells you when and where the article was published.

You should see this button instead: . Clicking that button will take you to:

Information about another database or databases we have which will give you full-text access OR
A link that says "Request item via Interlibrary Loan," which will let you place an Interlibrary Loan request for the article (this is free to yo, and will be delivered to you as a PDF through the Interlibrary Loan system ILLiad)

The process of finding articles can be confusing at first. Ask Jill for help if you can't find what you need!

Finding Articles

For Philosophy topics, start with these:

Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window
A bibliographic database covering worldwide research in the major philosophy fields, produced by the Philosopher's Information Center, featuring author-written abstracts covering scholarly research, anthologies, and book reviews.
PhilPapers This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive index of philosophy books and articles offering unique features such as real-time indexing of pre-prints, fine-grained classification by topic, email alerts, reading lists, advanced search functionality, and discussion forums.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It offers an interdisciplinary journal archive across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences

Other databases (see Databases by Subject dropdown on library's homepage for databases organized by disciplinary area)

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window A scholarly, multi-disciplinary database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications. PDF content dates back to 1887.
- This link opens in a new window
LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window This database contains LGBT journals, relevant bibliographic data from NISC's Sexual Diversity Studies, an LGBT thesaurus, author supplied abstracts and keywords, and searchable cited references.
Race Relations Abstracts This link opens in a new window This is an index containing thousands of records relating specifically to the relationship between races, including bibliographic records covering ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
- This link opens in a new window
APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window APA PsycInfo is unmatched as a resource for locating scholarly research findings in psychology and related fields across a host of academic disciplines.
Women's Studies International This link opens in a new window Covers the core disciplines in women's studies and feminist research, covering publications from 1972 to the present. Supports curriculum
GenderWatch This link opens in a new window Provides in-depth coverage of subjects that are uniquely central to women's lives. Including: the family, childbirth, birth control, daycare, domestic abuse, work and more.
Sex & Sexuality: Module I This link opens in a new window The first module covers a broad range of topics and is drawn from leading archives around the world. Module I focuses on sexology and the work of sex researchers, combining advice sought by members of the public with the corresponding answers, thoughts on research proposals and work sent by academics and medical professionals to the Kinsey Institute.
Sex & Sexuality: Module II This link opens in a new window This second module is focused upon the lived experiences of individuals from across the spectrum of human sexuality, including heterosexual and LGBTQI+ experiences, at different times in history specifically from the nineteenth century up to the present day.

Using "Advanced Search" in Databases

Most databases have an Advanced Search option, which will let you search using multiple terms at once. For example:

An asterisk (*) is a truncation symbol that will bring up results using all the letters leading up to (or following) the * -- so, black* will bring up Black, Blacks, Blackness, etc.

* * * * *

A database's Advanced Search option will also let you limit your search in a number of ways, including:

Limit by year of publication (helpful if you need the most current scholarship/literature)
Limit to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles (this is often just a box you can check)
Limit by language (if you read a particular language or languages, you can select those; you can also limit your search to just items in English)

For example, here are some options that often appear in Advanced Search:

Different subject databases may have other options as well, but most of our databases have these as Advanced Search options.

* * * * *

One box that you SHOULD NOT CHECK is the "Full Text" box. Sounds backwards, I know, but here's why:

Many databases will give you only the citation for a particular article and not the full text.

But! We have lots of databases, and the article that you need may be in a different database.

If you find an article that you want, and it looks like we don't have full text, click the blue "Find It @ GSU" button. That button will point you to the article if it's held in another database, or will help you set up an Interlibrary Loan for the article.

If you check the "Full Text" box in a database, you're actually saying that you only want articles which that particular database has available in "full text." You're shutting off that "Find It @ GSU" option.

Using a Database's Thesaurus

Some databases will have a link in the upper left hand menu that says "Thesaurus" (or similar terminology). You can use this feature to help identify relevant subject terms and related terms.

To use a database's Thesaurus option, click on the link and type your keyword into the resulting search box. Example, with results (from APA PsycInfo):