How do I search for journal articles?

One of the best places to start is the Expanded Academic ASAP (also known as SearchBank) database. It indexes articles from thousands of journals and magazines covering a broad range of subjects, and includes the full text of some of them. Help and instructions on how to search Expanded Academic ASAP is available at How to Search the Searchbank Databases. If you don't find what you need there, the next step is to go to the guide to resources by subject and find your course's department in the list. This will give you a list of databases and other resources related to your topic. Some of the articles you find may be fulltext online, but many of the databases will only give you citations or abstracts. DON'T IGNORE THESE! You will be cheating your research process if you only use the ones which are fulltext online, because many of the best, and most scholarly, journals are not available online at this point.

How do I know if the library has the journals I find?

It's not hard to find out whether or not we have the journals in print format. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to ALCUIN
2. Click "search."
3. Click "title."
4. Type the title of the JOURNAL (or source) in the box. Don't use the title of the article--these aren't listed in there. That's why you had to go to a database to begin with.
5. Press enter or return.
6. At this point, you might go right into your journal's record, or you might get a list of similar titles. If you get a list of titles, choose the one which either doesn't have a date next to it or has no extra information after the title. It may take a little hunting, but you'll find it. It will be the one that lists a location as "periodical collection and microform collection."
7. OK, you're in the home stretch. The last step, and perhaps the most important, is to check to see what form your volume is in. It may be bound, current, microfiche, or microfilm. Look for your volume number in the list, and that will tell you where to find it.
8. If you get a red note in the middle of the list saying "your entry ... would be here," it means either we don't have it or you have mistyped something. Be sure you check for the latter before you assume that it's not here. If we don't have it in print, there may be another way that we can get it for you. See How can I get an article that Furman doesn't have.