Divinity Research Tutorial

2. How can I find articles on my topic?

There are various electronic indexes that can help you identify journal articles, newspaper articles, and other materials not found in Orbis. We will focus here on four tools found in the "Databases" section of the Yale University Library web site:
ATLA Religion Database / WilsonWeb / Academic Search(EBSCOhost) / Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

These tools will not always give you the full text of an article online. If you are given only a citation for an article, note what journal it is in, then go to Orbis to find Yale's holdings and the call number of the journal. You need to locate the volume of the journal that contains your article. If Yale does not hold the journal you need, use Interlibrary loan to obtain a copy of the article.

Click here for a general overview and comparison of the tools listed above and similar databases. Scroll down for more information on the four databases treated here.

Our sample topic: Prayer in the public schools

ATLA Religion Database

The ATLA Religion Database indexes and abstracts thousands of articles, book reviews, and essays that appear in periodicals and multi-author monographs specifically focusing on religion and theology. It is an excellent resource if you are trying to find journal articles on any subject that is related to religion and theology. It does not provide full text articles, only citations for articles (ATLAS Full Text Plus is the [partically] full text version of the ATLA Religion Database). The ATLA Religion Database is available in CD-ROM and web versions. In this tutorial we will be using the web version.

Click here to connect to Yale's ATLA Religion Database page and then click on Connect to ATLA/ATLAS Religion Database.
NOTE: You will be able to connect only if you are on the Yale campus, connecting from off-campus with a Yale PPP account, or connecting through the Remote Authentication Proxy Server because of licensing agreements.

(Note: occasionally you will get this message: "Maximum number of users with this authorization are logged on. Please try again in a few minutes." This is because Yale has a limited number of simultaneous users for ATLAS, the prefered database. If this should occur, you can still access ATLA, containing only citations, by going to http://search.epnet.com/login.asp?profile=atlai).

Click here for tips on searching in the ATLA Religion Database

WilsonWeb

WilsonWeb is a collection of periodical indexing databases covering the Arts, Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences. You can search the databases separately or search across multiple databases simultaneously. The WilsonWeb databases cover a much broader subject area than the ATLA Religion Database. WilsonWeb is accessible via the Yale University Library Databases & Article Searching page.
(Note: WilsonWeb does not index multi-author books, only periodicals.)

For a topic like prayer in public schools, the expanded subject coverage of databases like WilsonWeb can be very helpful. Education journals, for example, might have articles dealing with prayer in public schools but would not be indexed by the ATLA Religion Database because of its more limited subject scope. The same is true for some journals on law, the social sciences, and many popular magazines. WilsonWeb also has the advantage of having some articles in full text form. This means you can read them right from your computer screen.

Click here to connect to Yale's WilsonWeb database page and then click on Connect to WilsonWeb.
NOTE: You will be able to connect only if you are on the Yale campus, connecting from off-campus with a Yale PPP account, or connecting through the Remote Authentication Proxy Server because of licensing agreements.

Academic Search via EBSCOhost

Academic Search is a database that indexes articles in thousands of scholarly journals and general interest magazines. Coverage for most journals begins in 1990, and in many cases the full text of articles is available. Much like WilsonWeb, Academic Search has full citation information and abstracts for all articles, as well as full text for many articles. Academic Search is accessible via the Yale University Library Databases & Article Searching page.
(Note: Academic Search does not index multi-author books, only periodicals.)

Searching in Academic Search

Once again we will be looking for information on prayer in public schools. Like WilsonWeb, Academic Search's subject coverage goes well beyond religion and theology (although it does index many theological journals). It can provide you with information from a wide range of sources on the topic of prayer in public schools, articles both from scholarly journals and the popular press.

Click here to get to Yale's Academic Search page and click on "Connect to Academic Search (EBSCOhost)".
NOTE: You will be able to connect only if you are on the Yale campus, connecting from off-campus with a Yale PPP account, or connecting through the Remote Authentication Proxy Server because of licensing agreements.

Unlike WilsonWeb, you will not need to select one or more databases. Academic Search Elite is the database available to you via EBSCOhost.

The opening screen will have the search form for a basic keyword search. Type prayer and public and school* where it says "Find," and then click on the search button.

(Note: The truncation character in Academic Search is the asterisk *. The question mark ? is a wildcard that represents one character.)

The Keyword Search String: prayer and public and school*

The results screen will tell you the number of records found (over 500 for this search) and lists the records, with the most recent first, in a chart format. If the full text of the article is available, a link to the article will appear in the result list; select Linked Full Text, PDF Full Text, or HTML Full Text to view the entire article. Use the SFX button to search Yale's catalogs for the library's print holdings. To see the complete record, including the abstract, and the full text when available, click on the title of the article in the main column. If the article has an image, there will be an image icon below the title. To print, e-mail, or save an article or citation, add it to your folder. Click on the right or left arrow icons to move forward or backwards through the results list pages.

Subject searching in Academic Search

Subject headings that you find while perusing the records retrieved by your keyword search can help you refine your search. If you look at the record "When prayer is out of bounds on field of play" which is in the March 12th, 1999 edition of Christian Science Monitor , you will see that FREEDOM of religion -- United States , RELIGION in the public schools -- United States , and PRAYER -- Government policy -- United States are all subject headings. Like Orbis, you can click on these subject headings to do a subject search.

To do a subject search, click on the blue Advanced Search tab above the green bar. An Advanced Search screen will appear with several text boxes followed by "in" and a box with a drop down menu that lets you specify where the search term should be found. Type the keywords prayer in the first text box, and public schools in the second box, select the boolean operator AND, and select subject in the drop down menus. Click on the search button.

The same search can be done in the keyword search screen. Type "SU prayer and SU public schools" in the text box, and then click on the search button.

Subject Search: SU prayer and SU public schools

Academic Search will then do a subject search by looking for all records with both prayer and public school listed as subject headings. You should get around 300 records. If you are wondering why our keyword search found over 500 articles while our subject search, using basically the same words, only found 300, it is because of the fields we asked Academic Search to search. Our keyword search looked through all fields (i.e. the author field, the title field, the abstract field, the subject field and the full text of any article that is full text). If all three words appeared in the record, it showed us that record. When we use the SU command in front of a particular term, we tell Academic Search to look only in the subject field.

This could be good or bad depending on what your particular topic is and how many records you want to look through. With a subject search you know that the articles you receive are about your subject. With a keyword search, your search terms may appear in the article, but that does not necessarily mean that the article focuses on your topic. The type of search you do will largely depend on where you are in the research process.

Ending your session

Click on the Yale Shield icon to end your session.

More?

If you want to learn more about Academic Search via EBSCOhost and see some of its advanced features, connect to EBSCOhost and then click on Help.

Comparison of databases

You may wonder how Academic Search (EBSCOhost) and WilsonWeb are different. It may seems like they basically do the same thing - and to a large degree, they do. The difference is in the journals you can access through them. Although there is overlap, many are unique to one database or the other. Most of the time, you can probably get more than enough information by just using one. However, if you wanted to be extremely complete in your information gathering, each database would contain some unique articles.

There is one more database that may help us in finding information on prayer in public schools. That is Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe.

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe is a full text news and information service that provides access to newspapers, magazines, transcripts, business and legal information and much more. It does not index "scholarly" journals, but is a good way to research opinions in the "popular" press. Unlike WilsonWeb or Academic Search (EBSCOhost), which both have some full text, every article in Academic Universe is available in full text.

Click here to connect to Yale University Library's Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe page and click on "Connect to Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe."
NOTE: You will be able to connect only if you are on the Yale campus, connecting from off-campus with a Yale PPP account, or connecting through the Remote Authentication Proxy Server because of licensing agreements.

In Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe the approach is by "type" of information: either News, Business, Legal, Medical, or Reference. For our purposes, we will concentrate on the News (Quick Info/Quick News Search & News/Guided News Search) resources. However, if you were focusing on legal aspects of prayer in public schools, you might want to investigate using the Legal Research pages.

When you first connect to Lexis-Nexis, the default search screen is "Quick News Search." This form searches LexisNexis news content. Your search will retrieve up to 125 relevant documents. Enter words or "phrases" for your Quick Search. Do not use any special commands (AND, OR, W/n, etc.) or wildcard characters (* and !).

Searching in Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

The Keyword Search String: prayer "public schools"

This quick search results in articles from major newspapers around the country, all in full text. If you click on the first record and scroll through the article you will see that our search terms are highlighted. This is helpful in determining if the article meets our research criteria. For the most part, the quick search looks for your terms in a segment of the document called the HLEAD, which only includes the first few paragraphs in news articles. Therefore, it is helpful to look quickly through the actual article or story to determine if it is relevant to your topic. For greater search control and a deeper news archive use Guided News Search, which allows for great searching flexibility (e.g. you can restrict your search only to U.S. news, or to news transcripts) and includes the ability to search the full text of articles.

Ending your session

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe has no logout or end button.

More?

If you are interested in finding out more about Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe and its search capabilities consult the database help pages or visit the Library's News Resources Tutorial.

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