Art Appreciation

What is a database?

A database brings together lots of information and makes it searchable. In libraries, a database can contain a collection of e-books or articles on general or specific topics. Searching in a database is similar to Googling something, but instead of searching the entire internet, you are searching that database's collection of articles.

How do I find articles?

This page focuses on using databases to find scholarly articles. In the academic world, an "article" is a long formal essay published in a journal. A journal is like a scholarly magazine on a specific topic. Like there are fashion, home decor, or cooking magazines, there are journals in history, chemistry, psychology, and other topics. Journals were traditionally printed physically, but nowadays they are mainly online and can be found in databases. A database may have access to hundreds of journals with thousands of articles each. You can search all of a database's articles at once by keyword, title, author, journal title, etc.

Learn more about how to search in databases below.