Library databases are best used when you need to find articles from scholarly journals, popular magazines, and/or newspapers.

Only currently enrolled students, faculty and staff may use the databases from off-campus. Simply click on the database that you wish to use and when prompted:

Students: Use your NCC ID # and assigned password.

Faculty/Staff: Use your college email credentials.

If you are using the databases on-campus, you will not need to log in.

Many college professors require that their students only use scholarly articles for assignments. What does this mean?

Scholarly articles are found in scholarly journals. They are also known as peer-reviewed articles, peer-reviewed journals, and/or original research articles.

First, what is a scholarly journal?

• The articles in these journals are written by scholars or academics within a specific field. For women's studies, this means that the authors of the articles are women's studies experts. These articles are peer-reviewed, meaning that other women's studies researchers, historians or experts read the articles and make comments or changes based on their expertise.
• You will not find these journals in a bookstore. They are very specialized sources and cost quite a bit of money (sometimes thousands of dollars for a one-year subscription!).
  
• The appearance of these journals are very plain: no photographs, plain paper, and there are not many advertisements.

Now, what do the actual articles look like?

• These articles contain original research. The researcher performed an actual study on a certain subject and is reporting their findings back to you. These are the best sources to use!
• The articles are often very long and contain charts, graphs, and other visual representations of the study.
• Look for these parts of the article. If these parts are not present, you probably do not have a scholarly article:
  • Abstract: A summary at the very beginning of the paper. It briefly describes what the actual study is about.
  • Methodology: This describes how the author went about performing his study.
  • Participants: These are the people, or groups of people, that participated in the study.
  • Results: This describes what the author discovered by performing his study.
  • Discussion: This summarizes the entire paper.
  • Works Cited/Reference List/Bibliography: There will be a long list of outside sources that the author consulted while writing his article.