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CHICLA 501: Chican@ and Latin@ Social Movements in the U.S. (Spring 2022) : Database Search Strategies

Finding Full Text of Articles in Databases

  • If you want to read the full text of article in a database, look for a link or button that says “Full Text,” “HTML Full Text,” “PDF Full Text”, "Linked Full Text", has an image of a document, or something similar. 
  • If there is not a link to the full text, Select the Find It button. Clicking this button searches all of the UW-Madison Libraries databases.
    • If the full text is available online, click the link to get to the full text. 
    • If it is not available online, use the Look for Print and Other Formats in the Library Catalog to look for a print copy.
    • You can also Request a Copy of the article. Library staff will scan the article and send it to your email.  Typically, if the article is available on campus, it will take 1-3 days.  If the article is not available on campus, it will take 3-9 days. Right now, it is taking a bit longer than typical to get articles, but the service is still available.  There is no charge for this service.

Searching Within Databases

This text tutorial shows you how to search for articles in article databases. https://www.library.wisc.edu/help/research-tips-tricks/searching-within-databases/

It shows you how to use AND to combine terms, limit to articles from scholarly journals or by date of publication, use subject headings and abstract to find keywords, find full text of articles, and use tools to generate or export citations.   

Search Tips

The following tutorial explains how to use database search strategies such as AND, OR, quotation marks, and truncation.  https://www.library.wisc.edu/help/research-tips-tricks/database-search-strategies/

Strategies:

  • Use AND to combine different words to find all those words, in any order.  
    • Chicana AND Wisconsin
  • Use OR to combine similar words or synonyms or variations
    • Chicana OR Latina OR Latinx
  • Use quotation marks ( " ") to search words as a phrase
    • "labor activism" 
  • Use truncation (*) to search for varied endings 
    • chican* to find chicana, chicano, chicanas, chicanos
  • Look at Subjects to find additional keywords and use them to find relevant and specific results.
  • Look for an option to limit to Scholarly Journals on the left side of search results in most databases
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