Finding background information
- Credo Reference
Provides access to a collection of aggregated and integrated reference books from high-quality publishers.
- Gale eBooks
Gale eBooks offers a broad cross-curricular collection of non-fiction titles, supporting science, geography, history, language arts, business and other subjects.
- Oxford Reference OnlineSpecialty encyclopedias, handbooks, thesauruses and dictionaries; emphasis on American Literature and Western Civilization.
- SAGE Reference E-BooksGrowing collection of topic and subject encyclopedias online. Note: To search only UIC subscribed titles, please click the Available to me button on the right.
Finding books
The following techniques can improve your success in searching the catalog for books:
- Use author and title searches for books cited in readings. For example, your syllabus may list Anna Guevarra, Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers.
- Use Proper Nouns. Proper nouns like Indira Gandhi or Qing Dynasty usually narrow a search and can lead to primary sources.
- Subject Headings. The display of subject headings can suggest search terms and perspectives on your topic. Subject headings bring together books on your topics.
- If one term does not work, try a few others. Experiment with different vocabulary related to your topic. Brainstorm ideas for relevant keywords and use background sources such as encyclopedias for suggestions.
- If the UIC copy is unavailable or if UIC does not have what you need, search I-Share. The I-Share catalog tells you what 70+ academic libraries in Illinois have and you can request online most of the books.
Finding journal articles
- JSTOR
Digitized back issues of scholarly journals with a rolling date of five years ago. Covers a wide variety of disciplines.
- Ethnic NewsWatch
Current articles from ethnic-focused news groups worldwide.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies
Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains nearly 900,000 records on all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
- America: History and Life
America: History and Life provides articles on the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present.
- Anthropology Plus
Citations to articles in anthropology, archaeology, and interdisciplinary studies, bringing together Anthropological Literature from Harvard and Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute of the UK.
- ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
ATLA indexes journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion.
- GenderWatchFocuses on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas.
- Historical AbstractsHistorical study of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the U.S. and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life).
- MLA International Bibliography with Full Text
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to the 1920s. The database contains millions of citations as well as full text for 1,000 journals.
Note: to watch the video on how to search, go to MLA International Bibliography on EBSCO - Political Science Abstracts WorldwideInternational literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration & policy. From 1975 to present. See also Worldwide Political Science Abstracts.
- Sociological AbstractsInternational literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
