Research Guides: Area and Global Studies: African: Finding Articles

Databases at UD

Journals give you the ability to search for articles on a specific topic or event. It can be an easier way to find relevant information because you are usually not sifting through a large pool of results. If you visit the E-Journals page, you can bring up a list of all the journals with subject content related to this area or you can narrow down by region. You can also search for a specific journal title from the E-Journals page or in DELCAT.

African Journals Online
African Journals Online (AJOL) is the world's largest online collection of African-published, peer-reviewed scholarly journals. AJOL provides free hosting for over 400 peer-reviewed journals from 30 African countries, using the internet and open source software. The journals cover the full range of academic disciplines with particularly strong sections on health and agriculture.
Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature
The Library of Congress Office, Nairobi, Kenya, regularly acquires and catalogs publications from 29 African countries. The Quarterly Index of African Periodical Literature provides an index of over 300 selected periodicals (mostly scholarly) which are acquired regularly from these countries.

Periodicals Index Online This link opens in a new window
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Indexes the complete contents of over 4,500 journals and magazines in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues up to 1995. The full text is available for some of the articles. The scope is international, and journals in multiple languages are indexed.
Project MUSE Journals This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the full text of over 450 journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics published by The Johns Hopkins University Press and other publishers.
A large number of open access e-books are also available on Project MUSE. Search DELCAT to access these free e-books.

Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
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Comprehensive database of more than 8,000 journals covering the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature, and other subjects. Most of the journals are in full text, available in HTML and PDF formats. Content includes hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and the CBC, as well as full-text New York Times articles from 1995 to the present. In contrast to General OneFile, Academic OneFile tends to include more academic titles.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Online access to citations and abstracts for every title in the Dissertation Abstracts database. The database includes citations for materials ranging from the first U.S. dissertation, accepted in 1861, to those accepted as recently as last semester. Those University of Delaware dissertations which have been digitized are free to University of Delaware faculty, students, and staff.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Ethnic NewsWatch is a comprehensive full-text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority, and native press in the United States. Ethnic NewsWatch provides a rich collection of articles, editorials, and reviews with a broad diversity of perspectives often at variance with the mainstream media.
The database also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals.

Ethnic NewsWatch™ comprehensively covers these ethnic categories:
- African American/Caribbean/African
- Arab/Middle Eastern
- Asian/Pacific Islander
- European/Eastern European
- Hispanic
- Jewish
- Native People
General OneFile This link opens in a new window
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Includes some 3,000 full-text periodicals covering a wide range of topics: business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, hobbies, humanities, law, literature and art, politics, science, social sciences, sports, technology, and many general interest topics. Has the full text of New York Times articles from 1995 to the present as well as audio files and transcripts of National Public Radio (NPR) programs from 1990 to the present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides access to core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The complete digitized backfiles of over 1000 scholarly journals are available, providing coverage of African-American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, business, ecology and botany, economics, education, finance, general science, history, language and literature, mathematics, music, philosophy, political science, population studies, sociology, and statistics.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 10,000 journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings. Contains current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage available to 1900.

African Writers Series This link opens in a new window
Includes key texts of modern African literature. This online edition includes over 250 volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose, including works by Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Steve Biko, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Nelson Mandela, Dambudzo Marechera, Christopher Okigbo, Okot p'Bitek and Tayeb Salih.
The acquisition of this database was made possible through the support of the Unidel Foundation.
Black Drama (2nd edition) This link opens in a new window
This edition of Black Drama, Second Edition contains approximately 1,462 plays by 233 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and much more. It combines several resources for research and teaching in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), historical black newspapers, and the Black Literature Index.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Historical Abstracts is an exceptional resource that covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women’s history, history of education, and more. This authoritative database provides indexing of more than 1,700 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.
MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
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The MLA International Bibliography consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. It provides access to scholarly research in nearly 4,000 journals and series. It also covers relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats.
Can be searched in conjunction with the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which contains all information available on journals and series on the Bibliographys Master List. The Directory of Periodicals is included in the Bibliography.

Columbia International Affairs Online This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. It includes a wide range of scholarship, such as working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from non-governmental organizations, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences.
CIAO is divided into the following categories: working papers, conference proceedings, journals (i.e., abstracts of journal articles), books, policy briefs, economic indicators, links and resources, schedule of events, and maps and country data.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
The CQ Researcher Plus Archive explores a single “hot” issue in the news in depth each week. Topics range from social issues to environment, health, education and science and technology.
Family and Society Studies Worldwide This link opens in a new window
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Provides comprehensive coverage of research, policy, and practice literature in the fields of Family Science, Human Ecology, Human Development, and Social Welfare. FSSW covers popular issues as well as meets the requirements of professionals in all fields of social work, social science and family practice. It includes publications from a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, sociology, psychology, demography, health sciences, education, economics, law, history, etc.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
One of the best sources for current information, especially from newspapers or wire services. Most of the citations have full text of the article. Also includes full text articles from selected magazines and journals.
Vendor Lyrasis. Publisher LexisNexis.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
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An index to the world's public and social policy literature in the fields of business, economics, local and federal government, political science, international relations, finance, and other social sciences. Coverage from 1972 to the present.
ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Statistical Insight provides fast and easy access to statistical information produced by U.S. Federal agencies, States, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Includes abstracts of journal articles selected from over 1,700 serial publications, abstracts of conference papers, relevant dissertation listings, etc. Covers sociological topics in fields such as anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology.
Can also be searched as part Social Services Abstracts.
Women's Studies International This link opens in a new window
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Covers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research. Includes sociology, history, political science & economy, public policy, international relations, arts & humanities, business and education. Nearly 800 essential sources include: journals, newspapers, newsletters, bulletins, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, theses, dissertations, NGO studies, Web sites & Web documents, and grey literature.
Provides indexing and abstracts for essential sources including: journals, newsletters, bulletins, books, book chapters, reports, theses, dissertations, and grey literature.

Gale OneFile: Business This link opens in a new window
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Provides indexing and abstracting of more than 900 periodicals and full text for 460 titles. It is an excellent source of information on management theories, business law, key industries, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, international trade, new technologies, small and emerging companies, etc. It includes indexing of the current year of The Wall Street Journal and the financial section of The New York Times and the current six months of the Asian Wall Street Journal.
Excellent source of information on management theories, business law, key industries, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, international trade, new technologies, small and emerging companies, marketing and advertising, job-hunting strategies, and banking.
EconLit This link opens in a new window
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EconLit is the American Economic Association’s electronic bibliography of economics literature throughout the world. It provides comprehensive information on accounting, capital markets, econometrics, economic forecasting, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory, urban economics and much more.

Tips & Tricks for Searching for Articles

Finding articles within databases and journals is not the same process you would use to conduct a search in Google or an internet search engine. You cannot type in a question, but rather need to choose specific keywords and phrases to find results. These tips are similar to how you would search for material in DELCAT.

Helpful Ways to Search:

Use quotations around a phrase to "tell" the database or journal that you want these words to remain together.
- Ex: "American exceptionalism"
Think of synonyms to your keywords...Especially when conducting historical research, you may need to develop words and phrases that were used during that particular time period, rather than modern-day words.
- Ex: World War I; First World War; The Great War - All would give you different results!
Use AND/OR to connect words, concepts, and phrases together to receive specified results.
- Ex: World War I AND United States

Use the Advanced Search option in databases and journals to narrow down by date, region, type of document, and more!

Area and Global Studies: African

Off Campus Access

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Databases at UD

Tips & Tricks for Searching for Articles