Juana Garcia/The Cougar
With final papers and research projects around the corner, here’s a guide to the digital resources, UH Libraries has to offer that can help students get desired grades.
On the homepage of UH Libraries, there are an array of search engine tools to help you find useful sources on a topic.
Databases
There are over 500 databases in the system but the site allows you to filter your search by subject, types of sources and provider.
From there, the digital library will suggest different corresponding databases for you to pick along with a summary of what each one includes.
In many of the databases, you can attach a few key terms based on your topic to narrow your search and other factors like the date of the source, language and peer review.
A good tip for finding additional sources is to look in the footnotes of the text where you can copy and paste the source into the UH database to further your research.
Journal Titles
Scholarly journals house peer reviews from other scholars and experts that can be helpful in finding a credible source.
In the search bar, you can include the title of the journal or the serial number. To limit the results you can select a category based on your topic or course.
The results will also show whether the University carries the journal in the library or at another online site for you to utilize. A list of details on the source such as the publisher and creation date is provided for each journal.
A tip for once you have selected the journal, you can type a keyword in the ‘search inside’ section that can help you find an article within the journal.
If you want to search for only an article, skip the extra step when on the journal titles page and click the link that says ‘search articles.’ There you will find links to interlibrary loans, newspaper articles and research help.
Google Scholar
If you want to expand your research, Google Scholar can broaden it with scholarly texts.
In Google Scholar settings, you can click library links and type in the University’s main library as well as up to five other libraries. This will filter your search with literature from those selected.
A tip for when you’re looking at these articles is if there is a link to the right of the result, that likely means UH Libraries has that source available to you.
