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Environmental Humanities

Databases

Databases allow you to search the contents of scholarly journals, as well as other materials. Some databases, such as JSTOR and Web of Science, cover a wide variety of topics. Others focus on the scholarship in a specific subject field.

Visit the Databases page to search for a particular database by name or to choose a subject category. Librarians can help you with recommended databases for specific topics.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be useful for finding scholarly journal articles, books, dissertations, and technical reports when you're having trouble choosing the right terms to find what you need in subject databases. As you know from using Google, you will get some fairly relevant results no matter what you enter into the search box.

Google Scholar Search

So why do librarians recommend subject databases over Google Scholar?

  1. Subject databases come with detailed descriptions of the content included. Google does not.
  2. Subject databases reveal how search results are ranked in terms of their relevance. Google does not.
  3. Subject databases offer specialized features that help both beginning researchers (e.g., limiting by source type) and advanced researchers (e.g., discipline-specific search fields). Google does not.