Using Indexes & Databases

To find articles by topic, you will need to use an index. Basically an index is a tool that points at or leads you to something else. Here's an example:

Look in the back of one of your textbooks. You will probably find an index. If you look for a particular topic, the index will point to the page numbers in the textbook where that topic is addressed.

The kind of indexes you will use to find articles are sometimes published as whole books. These are called print indexes.

Now, however, most indexes are produced in electronic format and called databases. Most of the indexes you will use for undergraduate research will be online (electronic) databases.

Let's take a look at what you would get by using one of these databases.

Suppose you were looking for current articles about the censorship of music. One very popular index, or database, for undergraduate research is called Academic Search (often called EBSCOhost). You could type in your search as follows:

You would get citations to many articles, including the following two examples.  Clicking on the titles below will lead you to abstracts for these articles. Clicking on the full page icon will lead to the full text of the article. Try it out below.