LibGuides: Theater: Articles

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What Are Databases?

Articles will provide very targeted information, usually focusing on one small segment of a topic. Articles also tend to be more recent. Newspaper and magazine articles can be updated within days or weeks of an event, while academic journal articles may take a few months or longer.

Library databases are the best place to locate articles. These databases contain thousands of sources for you to search for free full-text. Databases have different types of sources, mostly journal or magazine articles, but some databases provide multimedia such as videos or images.

These databases are recommended for researching theater. Read the descriptions to locate the best database for your research. Then, click the access link, log in, and search for your topic.

Recommended Databases

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)

Access Academic Search Complete | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

A full text database covering many different disciplines and subject areas. A great place to start research on any topic.

Gale Literature

Access Gale Literature | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

Biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary genre. The best source for literature criticism. Use to locate criticism and information about plays.

JSTOR

Access JSTOR | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

The best place to start for arts and humanities research. JSTOR includes back issues of thousands of scholarly journals, with an excellent collection of art and humanities journals. You can also limit your search under "Narrow by Discipline" to Performing Arts.

"Performing Arts" limit in JSTOR

Biography (Gale in Context)

Access Biography | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

Research people within the field of theater, including performers, dramatists, and directors. Contains biographical information from reference books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Films on Demand: Drama and the Theater

Access Films on Demand | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

A collection of streaming videos related to theater from Films on Demand.

Humanities Source (EBSCO)

Access Humanities Source | Video Tutorial | How to Cite

Articles covering many aspects of the humanities, including: literature and language, history, philosophy, archaeology, classical studies, folklore, gender studies, performing arts, history, religion and theology.

Many of the databases will have a way for you to limit to peer-reviewed articles. These are articles that are more scholarly and academic, and have undergone a rigorous review process before being published.

Look for a checkbox on the search screen that says scholarly, peer-reviewed, or academic.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar allows you to search for scholarly articles that have been indexed by Google. By default, most articles in Google Scholar do not have the full text available. To increase the full-text results, set up Google Scholar to connect to Santa Fe College's database and journal holdings.

Click the three-line icon in the upper left (also called the 'hamburger' menu).
Click the Settings link; this may be under the More menu.
Click Library links in the menu.
Search for Santa Fe College - Find it @ Santa Fe, add a checkmark, and save it.

Only articles with a link in the right column will have their full text available. Find it @ Santa Fe means the full text is in a library database.

You may be prompted to log in with your Office 365 account when clicking the Find it @ Santa Fe link.

If you need access to an article that does not have the full text available, you may request a copy through interlibrary loan.

Research is not done in a vacuum. Research articles will build upon previous work, which allows you to follow a timeline of research.

If you find an article that you like, look at that article's references/citations. You may find more articles that are similar in their research goals and that could be useful. You can then use Google Scholar to locate the full text. For instance, here is a citation of an article about Henrietta Lacks.

Robert D. Truog, Aaron Kesselheim, Steven Joffe, "Paying Patients for Their Tissue: The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks," Science 337, 2012: 37-38.

Input the article title in the Google Scholar search box (be sure that you have already set up your Library Links to connect to Santa Fe College). You may need to add in more information, such as author names, if there are too many irrelevant search results.

Look to the right for the full text links. If there is no full text available, you may place an Interlibrary Loan request.

You may also move forward within the research. In Google Scholar, it will tell you how many articles have cited the article you are looking at. In this case, the article "Paying Patients for Their Tissue" has been cited 62 times.

"Cited by" link highlighted

Click that Cited by link to see the articles that have cited this article, along with full text links as needed.

Google Scholar from Lawrence W. Tyree Library on Vimeo.

Hello! This video tutorial will demonstrate how to use Google Scholar and how to link database holdings.

Google Scholar is a subset of Google that allows you to search for scholarly information, including articles, scholarly books, and other types of publications. Not everything indexed in Google Scholar has the full text available. However, you can increase your full-text results by adding Santa Fe College as your library. To access Google Scholar, go to scholar.google.com.

At the top left of the page, click the icon with three horizontal lines, and then choose Settings.

On the next screen, click Library links.

On the Library links page, type Santa Fe College in the search box, and press the Enter key. In the resulting list, select Santa Fe College – Find it @ Santa Fe, and then click Save.

Saving your settings takes you back to the Google Scholar search screen. Enter your search in the box provided.

The results list displays matching articles and more. If you see a Find it @ Santa Fe link to the right of an article, the Tyree Library has access to that article. Click the Find it @ Santa Fe link.

Once you click the link, you may be prompted to sign using your Office 365 account. You might not see this screen if you are logged in elsewhere to Canvas or your Office 365 email.

You may be taken directly to the full text of the article or to an intermediary page. On this page, look at the View Online section to see the full text links.

Article options will vary, depending on the database it is part of. All articles should provide the full text.

Articles with other links in the far-right column are freely available online. As with any link to a file found online, be cautious. If you do not recognize the source of the link, you probably should not click it. Instead, contact a librarian for assistance.

If an article does not have a link in the right column, the full text is not currently available. To request a full-text copy of the article, click the double arrows icon.

Next, click the Request it link.

If you are not already signed in, click the Sign in link.

Choose Office 365 and log in with your Office 365 account.

Now you will see the option for an interlibrary loan request. This is the process of requesting that the Library obtain an item for you, which is free.

Fill out your information in the top part of the form. The bottom half should already be filled in with the article information, but you should double check before you submit. Articles are usually available within a week.

This concludes the video tutorial on using Google Scholar. If you have any questions, please contact a librarian:

352-395-5409
reference@sfcollege.edu
Building Y, NW Campus
sfcollege.edu/library