LibGuides: English: Interdisciplinary databases

Introduction to interdisciplinary databases

This page focuses on possible ways to expand your research beyond resources from core English Studies databases. it moves from approaches that will expand your research a little bit to ones that will likely bring back huge numbers of results.

Searching one other database will expand your search by adding in one more disciplinary perspective.
Searching JSTOR or Project MUSE will expand your search into multiple disciplines, but via a limited number of journals
Library Search and/or Google Scholar expand your search across all disciplines and huge numbers of journals

Subject databases for other disciplines

Searching in one additional discipline allows you expand your search incrementally.

History databases

America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Source of information focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
For more help, watch the library's tutorials for Historical Abstracts AND America: History and Life on:
- Using limiters
- Using advanced search
Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present. History of the United States and Canada are covered in America: History and Life
For more help, watch the library's tutorials for Historical Abstracts AND America: History and Life on:
- Using limiters
- Using advanced search

Databases for other disciplines

A few more examples are provided below. Go to our databases A-Z page to find even more. Use the All Subject pull-down menu to narrow by discipline.

ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials This link opens in a new window
Citations and some full-text for scholarly journals, essays, book reviews, and multi-author works from the American Theological Library Association.
Gender Studies Database This link opens in a new window
Covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia from 1972 to present. Essential subjects covered include gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, gender identity and more.
SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive and high quality sociology research database encompassing the broad spectrum of sociological study.

JSTOR and Project Muse

JSTOR and Project Muse are journal repositories. Journals that appear in either one usually have 100% full text, but a journal only appears in in one at all if the publisher has made and agreement with the repository. I do not use them as starting point for research, because their coverage of a single discipline is never as good as a specialized subject database like the MLA International Bibliography, Education Source, or Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts.

Where they do shine:

They allow you to do an interdisciplinary search without going as big as Library Search or Google Scholar.
They allow you to search the full text of everything-- great for when you are looking for information on a person, thing, event, or even a word, and you are not finding whole articles focused on it.
JSTOR has long back runs of journals, allowing you to find scholarly sources from as far back as the late 19th century.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text scholarly journal articles in Arts & Sciences, Biological Sciences, Business, Health, and General Sciences.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journal articles in the areas of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and more.

Library Search and Google Scholar

Library Search is the search box on the library home page. It cross searches a large percentage of our holdings, including books. What Library Search and Google Scholar have in common is that both are ways to explode the scope of your search, because they cover all disciplines. So, a lot more sources, but often messy results.

The Google algorithm and search interface are very different from what library databases use. Sometimes this is a good thing!

If you use Google scholar, make sure to set it up so that it will talk to the WCU library systems. This video will show you how.