NOVA’s Periodical Databases

NOVA buys periodical databases that contain articles and citations from thousands of magazines, journals and newspapers.

To get to the periodical article databases that NOVA subscribes to:

- start at the library home page (www.nvcc.edu/library)

- select Articles

Because these databases and their content are not available for free to just anyone, whenever you want to use them from an off-campus computer you’ll be prompted to log in with your NOVAConnect username and password.

You have MANY database choices. We buy this variety of databases because they each have different magazine, newspaper, and journal articles in them. There is SOME overlap, but in general, the content is different from database to database. This means a few different things for you:

- You need to pick the right database(s) for your topic (more on this shortly),

- If the first database you try doesn’t get you what you need, try another, and

- Use more than one database (especially if you need to be comprehensive).

Search Strategies

- Pick an appropriate database for your topic:

- The databases listed near the top of the library’s databases page, including Academic Search Complete and ProQuest, will be useful for nearly all topics. They have magazine, newspaper, and journal articles from thousands of periodicals on a wide range of topics.

- Do you have a controversial topic? Opposing Viewpoints has magazine, journal and newspaper articles focusing on controversial topics (this database also has essays from books, reference articles, and statistics).

- We have several databases that focus on specific subjects, such as Business, Health, Science, and Psychology. Look for links to these databases further down the page.

- Once you’ve selected a database, type in only the most important words related to your topic. For example, instead of typing in I need information on the internment camps that Japanese Americans were put in during World War II, just type in internment camps and Japanese Americans and world war ii .

- Another important tip is to put the word AND between your search terms – if you don’t, some databases will assume you only want to find articles with those words all right next to each other.

You may remember from the units on finding websites and finding books that we didn’t say much about needing to use the word AND between your search terms. That’s because most web search tools and library catalogs automatically assume there’s an AND between each of your terms – they assume that you want to find all the words you entered anywhere in the website or book’s record. So it can be a bit confusing knowing whether to use the word AND between your search terms; however, if you’re not sure whether or not to use an AND between your terms, it’s better to use it – it won’t confuse the web search tools or library catalogs.

- Use an asterisk at the ends of certain words to find all words starting with those letters. This works great for finding plurals such as bear*; this finds bear, bears, but also bearing. It would also work well for other words such as teens: teen* finds teen, teens, teenager, teenagers, teenaged.

Looking at Your Results

In your list of results, you will see some basic information about each article, including the article title, author name, periodical title, and date of publication. Some of our databases divide the results up into types of periodicals, so if you’re only looking for a newspaper article, you can go straight to the tab or section where those results are grouped together. In some cases, you will be able to read the complete text of the periodical – look for a link that says “Full text.”