LibGuides: American and Canadian Studies: Journals

Journals

Journals are also known as periodicals. They are an important resource because they:

are published on a regular basis
contain the most up to date scholarly research in their subject
tend to be shorter and discuss the subject in more detail than books

Some examples: Lancet; Nature; Journal of Black Studies; Art History; Journal of World Literature.

Don't rely solely on Google or even Google Scholar for your research! Findit@Bham is a good place to start looking for good quality journal articles, but it is more efficient if you use one of the bibliographic databases available in your subject. These will find relevant journal articles and sometimes also books, reports, working papers and conference proceedings.

Some databases will give direct full-text access to the articles. Others will provide an index and abstract (a short summary) of the article.

If the full text is not available in the database, there will be a link to check if we have the full text available from elsewhere.

Recommended Databases for American and Canadian Studies

ProQuest Literature & Language This link opens in a new window
A cross-searchable collection of 11 databases including the MLA International Bibliography and British Humanities Index covering all areas of literature and language as well as British and American theses in these subjects.
ProQuest One Literature
ProQuest One Literature contains a large amount of literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and many primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. Enhanced by interpretive sources such as book reviews and criticism sourced from wider, interdisciplinary publications in the fields such as humanities and history, it provides diverse, global perspectives with sources from all over the world
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Online access to humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from scholarly publishers.
Humanities Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Index to articles from a broad range of English language periodicals in the Arts and Humanities from 1984 onwards. It has an American bias.
Humanities Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes over 300 key journals and newspapers in Humanities. It can be cross-searched with a number of other databases on the ProQuest platform.
Web of Science (Core Collection) This link opens in a new window
Web of Science (previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a gateway service to several databases covering most disciplines. The ‘roaming functionality’ enables you to access it from anywhere and still be recognised as a UoB member. For this feature to continue you must log in on campus or via Findit@Bham at least once every 12 months.
SCOPUS This link opens in a new window
Large abstract and citation database providing access to 19,000 titles from a wide range of international publishers. It contains peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources.

ProQuest Social Sciences This link opens in a new window
Cross-searchable collection of 19 databases indexing sociology, the applied social sciences, linguistics, politics, physical education, criminal justice and Islamic studies, as well as British and American theses in these subjects.
Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window
This index covers almost 2,500 journals across the social science disciplines and is one of five databases that make up the Web of Science, which is accessible via the Web of Knowledge.
SCOPUS This link opens in a new window
Large abstract and citation database providing access to 19,000 titles from a wide range of international publishers. It contains peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources.

FIAF Index to Film Periodicals Plus This link opens in a new window
Index of hundreds of academic and popular film journals with access to full text. maintained by The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)

EconLit This link opens in a new window
Econlit indexes and abstracts more than 550 international economics journals and provides coverage back as far as 1969 covering all fields of economics.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Full text business database, covering management, economics, finance, accounting, international business and marketing.
ABI/INFORM Global - ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to wide range of business and management journals, newspapers, working papers, magazines etc. Access to some titles is as far back as 1923.

Finding databases

Apart from books and journals, the Library subscribes to a vast array of other electronic resources which are of relevance to all subjects. These can be bibliographic databases, historical sources, original texts, newspapers, statistics, images, multi-media resources, websites, etc.

In FindIt@Bham, these can be found by clicking on the Databases or database search tab at the top of the screen. You may need to first click on the 3 horizontal dots to enable this function.

You can search for them by their name, if you know it, using the Title box or the alphabetical links under the search bar. Otherwise, you can select a subject from the Resource subject filter on the left.

If you are looking for a specific type of resource (e.g. newspapers, statistics, images, etc.), use the Resource type filter on the left for a drop-down list.

Access to databases

Once you select a database, it will give you a description of it, the type of resource it is, and whether it is subscribed or free of charge:

Click on its title to access the resource. If there is a note saying Please read before use!, this is usually about information you need for access, such as a specific username and password. If there is an online user guide available, there will be a link to it.