How to find subject specfic article indexes for a research paper
Don't know where to start? Research Quickstart!
Research Quickstart is a great tool available online at http://www.lib.umn.edu/undergrad/.
All you have to know to use this tool is the topic that your paper might fall under. For example, a paper on "Adult Education" might fall under the heading "Education". A paper on "Environmental Change" might fall under several headings such as "Environmental Health", "Environmental Policy", or even "Government Information, US."
Once you've chosen a heading the Research Quickstart tool will give you a list of general and subject-specific article databases that will have scholarly articles on your chosen topic.
General database: A general database will have a variety of scholarly and popular articles across many different subject or topic areas. Academic Search Premier is an example of a general database.
Subject-Specific database: A subject-specific database will have a variety of scholarly articles across a small set of subjects or topics that are usually related. For example, Business Source Premier will have articles relating to business. This database would not have unrelated topics such as music, dance, medicine. science etc...it is a specialized database of articles concentrating on business only.
To review this process you can find a tutorial called Finding Article Indexes