LibGuides: Modern Africa: Searching for Articles

Searching for articles on a topic

There are two basic ways to search for articles on a topic:

1 - Searching in ZipSearch

2 - Searching in individual databases

ZipSearch is a tool that searches in many different databases simultaneously, including those that contain African content, such as:

There are several reasons you may want to search in only one database:

If you are trying ZipSearch and are getting too many results, that is one way to limit your search
You only want one type of result, such as a biography or only articles about history
Many databases are not included or covered completely in ZipSearch, so they must be searched individually. For those databases with African content that are not in ZipSearch, see "Other databases".

Limiting your search:

Most databases allow you to "limit" your search by:

Choosing a date range
Choosing to search only for scholarly or peer reviewed articles
Choosing to search only for results that have the full text attached
Other options, such as subject, language, or type of publication (newspaper, journal, magazine, etc.)

Selecting one or all of these options will help make your search more specific and reduce the number of results.

Make sure you look for and use these options no matter which database you search.

Do you know where the Article is (what journal, conference, volume, pages, etc)? Use the UA Libraries Catalog. opens new window

For journals, use a title search (exact title) opens new window
For conferences, use a keyword search opens new window
Pay attention to the volumes and years that we have. For more assistance, please contact me.

Need a Specific Article that Can't be Downloaded and is not in our Library? Try

InterLibrary Loan
Use when you need a reference and you can't access it through UA Libraries, OhioLINK, or SearchOhio.

You found the perfect article; now how do you get the full text?

Sometimes the complete article is available immediately. You will see a link for the PDF or HTML version of the full text if the article is available from that database. If it is available from another database that the University of Akron subscribes to, there will be a link that says "full text through LinkSource". If you click on that link, you should be redirected to the full text.
If the full text is not available, click on the button that says "request through InterLibrary Loan" to automatically request the item. If the database doesn't have that button, write down the citation information, and enter the request through InterLibrary Loan manually. (see Tutorial tab for help)