Journal Articles & Databases
The Pratt Libraries provide both print and electronic access to finding articles from magazines, journals and newspapers. To find articles on a topic, try searching our online databases. To find a specific article, try our E-Journals search.
Databases contain citations, which often include brief summaries (called "abstracts"), helping you decide which articles are useful.
If the full-text of an article is not included with the citation in a database, you will need the citation to locate the full text article in either another database or in its print version.
How do I find the databases?
The easiest way to get to the Databases List is via Quick Links on the right side of the Libraries Homepage. You access the Databases List via the Find Resources tab at the top of the Homepage.
The Find Resources page also offers helpful searching tips & strategies.
Databases
To find articles on a topic, use library databases (a.k.a. periodical indexes).
*Remember that PrattCat, the library catalog, lists books and journals or magazines by their titles, not by the individual book chapters or articles contained within these materials. Databases do list (or index) individual articles and sometimes even book chapters. For this reason, using databases is important.
The following databases will be useful for literature-related research. You should consider searching in both general / multi-disciplinary databases, as well as discipline-specific databases, like those focused on literary topics and the humanities.
- Academic OneFile This link opens in a new windowA resource for peer-reviewed / scholarly full-text journals and reference sources covering all disciplines including the arts and literature.
- General OneFile This link opens in a new windowA general database covering a wide range of topics: computers, current events, environmental issues, health care, humanities, literature and art, politics, science, social science, technology, etc. There is more popular magazine than scholarly journal coverage in this particular database.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowJSTOR is a journal archive offering full-text articles for a variety of fields including literature.
- Project MUSE - Premium Collection This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text access to a comprehensive selection of prestigious humanities and social sciences journals which are heavily indexed and peer-reviewed, with critically acclaimed articles by scholars in their fields.
- Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowOffers non-scholarly magazine article coverage for a variety of topics. The general-interest periodicals indexed here were published in the United States from 1890 to 1982.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowProvides citations and abstracts of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources in the humanities, sciences and social sciences.
- Taylor & Francis Online This link opens in a new windowIncludes coverage of journals on literature and literary criticism.
Get Help w/Research
- Chat-w/-A-LibrarianChat online with a librarian (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm).
- Ask-A-LibrarianCall, email, or visit our Reference Desk :)
Brooklyn: (718) 636-3704
Manhattan: (212) 647-7539
Email: libref@pratt.edu
Location: The Reference Desk is on the 1st Floor of the Brooklyn Library.
Finding Articles
This video shows how to find articles through the libraries' databases. To enlarge the video, click on the bottom right corner of the player.
Search Terms for Databases
Listed are possible terms to use in PrattCat when searching for books related to literature.
What other search terms can you think of yourself?
There's no one "right" search. In fact, several searches will probably work best!
Possible Search Terms:
analysis / analytical
anthology
author
collection
criticism / critical
fiction
non-fiction
novel
short-story
poetry
prose
theory / theoretical
writer / writing
Citations are Important
Once you determine that an article appears to be relevant to your topic, you will need to locate the full text as well as cite the article later in your Bibliography or Works Cited page. For these reasons, make sure to save (email, write down, or save electronically) the full citation of your article.
A full citation includes the article title, journal or magazine title, volume, number, month, year, as well as page numbers. If you found your full text article via a database or online magazine, you will want to record that information for your bibliography, too.