LibGuides: Modern Languages & Literature: Find Articles

Databases

Databases are extremely useful tools for finding articles.

This page lists recommended databases for research in Modern Languages and Literatures.

Great Places to Start

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes articles in literature, language, folklore, and linguistics - over 4,000 U.S. and international journals.
Coverage: 1880s to present

The MLA Bibliography contains detailed bibliographic information on scholarly publications from around the world and across a broad range of topics, including
- Literature from any country and in any language
- Literary theory and criticism
- Dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater)
- Folklore
- Linguistics
- College-level teaching of language, literature, and rhetoric and composition
- History of printing and publishing
Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) This link opens in a new window Coves the field of linguistics and its various sub-disciplines, LLBA primarily abstracts articles from approximately 2,600 periodicals published worldwide. It also abstracts monographs, recent books, technical reports and more.
Subjects Covered
- Anthropological Linguistics
- Applied Linguistics
- Descriptive Linguistics
- Discourse Analysis / Text Linguistics
- Hearing and Speech Physiology
- Hearing - Pathological and Normal
- History of Linguistics
- Interpersonal Behavior and Communication
- Language Classification
- Language - Pathological and Normal
- Learning Disabilities
- Lexicography / Lexicology
- Mental Retardation
- Morphology
- Nonverbal Communication
- Orthography, Writing Systems
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonology
- Poetics / Literary Theory
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychometrics
- Semantics
- Semiotics
- Sociolinguistics
- Special Education
- Syntax
- Theory of Linguistics
- Typology
Guides:
- IDS Search Help: Overview
- LLBA Fact Sheet
Project Muse This link opens in a new window Provide access to full-text scholarly journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences with over 120 publishers currently participating.
View the List of Journals Covered
JSTOR This link opens in a new window Offers interdisciplinary content including approximately 2,600 academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials.
On occasions, you may encounter problems opening PDFs. The reason for this to happen is most likely due to the time out error. This could be due to a slow internet connection or a large download size. Many times, articles with images contained in them will time out the download.
To resolve this, right click on the link "Proceed to PDF" and select "Save Target As..." (or "Save Link as..." for Firefox). This will allow you to save the PDF to your computer and should allow for a faster, more successful download.
If the problem persists, check the PDF Help Page at JSTOR

Also Helpful

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Provides over 20,000 indexed and abstracted journals including 6,600 full-text journals and magazines, nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. PDF content dating back to 1887.
To see which titles are available in full-text, as well as the names of all titles indexed and abstracted, check the EBSCOhost Database Coverage List and Title List by Subject . Updated daily.
Anthrosource This link opens in a new window Contains current issues for 15 of the AAA's peer-reviewed publications as well as an electronic archive of all AAA journals
ERIC This link opens in a new window
Indexes with abstracts of journal articles, unpublished reports, and other documents in education and related topics.
ERIC is also available via Proquest, OCLC FirstSearch, and at ERIC website with access to full text documents from 1993-present. ERIC consists of two files:
- CIJE - Current Index to Journals in Education which indexes over 750 professional journals - all are assigned ERIC numbers beginning with an EJ (Eric journal).
- RIE - Resources in Education which indexes a variety of documents; all are assigned ERIC numbers beginning with an ED (Eric document). OCLC provides access to online full-text ED records via subscription links to EDRS Not all ED documents are available online. Inclusion depends on the authors original copyright agreement with EDRS. Typically 80% of ED documents permit online full-text usage. HINT: on OCLC look for the EDRS link at the bottom of the detailed record.
A variety of help options are available:
Humanities International Index This link opens in a new window Provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracting for over 1,700 journals and contains more than 1.5 million records. The database includes all data from American Humanities Index plus bibliographic records from a multitude of international journals, books and reference works. This database provides citations and abstracts for articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Includes access to over 1,800 professional journals, chapters, books, reports, theses and dissertations, published internationally. Additionally, there are more than 8 million cited references in 185,000 journal articles, books, and book chapters.
Subject Coverage
- Applied psychology
- Communication systems
- Developmental psychology
- Educational psychology
- Experimental human and animal psychology
- Personality
- Psychological and physical disorders
- Physiological psychology and neuroscience
- Professional personnel and issues
- Psychometrics and statistics
- Social psychology
- Social processes and issues
- Sports psychology and leisure
- Treatment and prevention
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window Index with abstracts to more than 250 English-language journals, as well as dissertations and unpublished papers, in sociology, social work, and other related social sciences. Access includes 1963 to date. Updated six times per year.
Guide

CSA Search Help
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new window Provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration/policy.
As well as journals, WPSA also indexes books, book chapters, reviews of books and other media, and dissertations. Cited references have been included for many articles from the core journal literature added to the database since 2001. Records are indexed using a thesaurus of over 3,000 terms.

Subject Coverage:
- Comparative politics
- Developing nations
- Disarmament
- Economic policy
- Electoral systems
- Environmental policy
- Government/Political systems
- History and theory of political science
- International relations/trade
- Labor relations
- Military policy
- Methodology and research technology
- Political behavior
- Political economy
- Political psychology
- Politics and law
- Politics and communication
- Politics and religion
- Politics and society
- Public administration
- Security and defense
- Welfare systems
Update FrequencyMonthly. Approximately 20,000 new records added per year.

Search Help

Search Strategies for ML_L_Majors

Searching a Database: Tips

There are usually five things you can do with a database:

Search using keywords
Refine results (e.g., relevance, date, peer-review, subject, full-text only, etc)
Access a source (cilck PDF or "find it" links)
Email yourself the source full-text and/or citation
Cite a source (be sure to double check citation generators!)

More search tricks:

Use Boolean Operators (and, or, not) to separate keywords
Use quotation marks (" ") to search for phrases, such as "critical reading" or "into the woods"
Use an asterisk (*) to search all variations of a word root, such as child* for child, children, and childrens
Use an exclamation mark (!) as a wildcard, such as metamorphos!s for metamophosis and metamorphoses

Accessing an Article

If you do not see a PDF link, you may see a "find it" button. This means this database does not have the PDF full-text, but another might!

When you click "find it", a new tab will open and you will see one of two things:

1. "Full text is available at: [Database]" - click the database link (e.g., EBSCO Academic Search Complete) to find the full-text

2. "No full text available." If you see this, you can "request this article" through interlibrary loan:

Interlibrary Loan

If Cal State LA does not have an article or book chapter or if you are unable to access the physical copy, you can request an electronic copy through interlibrary loan!

The iLLiad sign-on screen is pictured below. First-time users will need to register.

Once you are signed in, you may see an auto-populated form ready to submit (if you came to iLLiad from a "request this article" link). Otherwise, you need to fill out a form to submit a "New Request"

You may request up to 2 book chapters per book (due to copyright) and up to 2 articles per journal volume.
There is no limit on total requests.
Complete one form per chapter or article.

Interlibrary Loan Request (iLLiad) Video Tutorial

What is Google Scholar?

GoogleScholar searches the entire web for scholarly materials.

Downsides:

Very limited search customization and filtering.
There is no way to refine to peer-reviewed articles.
It will list things by mere popularity, including unpublished dissertations and reports.
This means you must do MORE WORK to determine what type of source you're looking at and if it's useful!

Upsides:

You can easily search for an article by title.
Google Scholar can recognize you as a Cal State LA student so you are linked to library materials (see below)

Add Cal State LA to Google Scholar

If Google Scholar knows you are a Cal State LA student, you will see "Find it @ Cal State LA" links, pictured below.

Add Cal State LA to your institutions:

University Library

Modern Languages & Literature