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ARCH: Architecture: Finding Articles in Library Databases

Databases containing books, articles, and videos

Video Tutorials

Need help searching some of the databases listed above? You can view our search tutorials:

See more tutorials on the NCC Libraries YouTube channel. 

Strategies for Working with Library Databases

Search Keywords

The library databases search for every instance of your search keyword or keywords as you typed them. If that word or word(s) appear anywhere in the:

  • title
  • summary
  • publication information
  • or sometimes even the text or content itself

That source will be in your results list, even if it is not actually about your topic or has very little information related to it. 

(Google works similarly, but does a lot of prediction and guesswork through its algorithm about what you are looking for that our library databases may not.)

Search Filters & Limiters

Most library databases will let you filter your results by:

  • Full-text
  • Date (of Publication)
  • Source type
  • Scholarly (peer-reviewed)

Sometimes you can choose these options when you first enter your search but sometimes you need to apply them after you have a search started.

Full-text will almost always be appropriate if you want to be able to access, view, or read whatever you see in the results immediately.

Source type is helpful if you only want to search for specific types of content - like articles, books, streaming video or audio files. 

Scholarly (peer-reviewed) may also be useful to see only those types of sources in your results. 

Accessing Full-Text

If you selected Full-Text as a search limiter, you should see a link somewhere on the page to the PDF or HTML text version of the source. Depending on the database, this link may be in different places.

Sometimes you may see Open in..., View record in..., or Full-Text Finder in EBSCO Discovery Service, which means the source is located in another database. It's usually just a few more clicks to get to the PDF or HTML text in it's original location if that is the case.