Articles

Using the electronic sources available through the WMU Libraries you should be able to easily locate full text articles in your area of interest. Here are instructions to help you get started:

An index is the first tool you should consult when seeking journal articles. From any page on the Libraries’ website you may easily find a selection of sources that index journal articles in your field. Select the Articles link in the upper left corner of any page on the Library site: http://www.wmich.edu/library/

On the Finding Articles page you will see a selection of general interest databases. These sources include articles on a wide variety of subjects. Indexed in these databases you will find news sources; as well as scholarly, trade, and popular magazines and journals. If you have not selected a topic for the project you are researching, these sources provide a way to measure the amount of information available on a topic that you are considering.

Below the selection of general interest indices are two additional ways to find article indices for the material you need.

1. In the middle of the screen you will see that you may choose an index by subject. This is your best choice if you do not know the name of the database you want to search. For example: if you look in the Subject List and click on Education, you will see a list of sources in that field.
2. If you know the title of the article index, then you may select the appropriate letter of the A-Z Listing of Article Indexes and Databases. For instance: if you wanted to search in Education Abstracts you would click the letter “E” and then scroll down until you find the link for the Education Abstracts database.
   

Each database listed on the Libraries’ website includes a brief description of the information found in the database, as well as coverage dates for that material.

Pay particular attention to these descriptions as they give you important information about what you will and in some cases what you will NOT find in that database. For example, many online databases only index materials going back a few years. So if you were looking for an older article, or searching for a historical topic, you might not find it in the selected electronic database.