You are probably familiar with newspaper and magazine articles. You can find these through the library website.
There is another kind of article called a journal article. This kind may be less familiar to you.
Journal articles (or scholarly articles, as they are sometimes called) are typically written by professors or other experts. Journal articles are typically focused on one narrow topic, are typically written for other experts, and are longer than magazine articles but shorter than books.
Journal articles in the arts field might have titles like:
In comparison, magazine articles will typically be simpler, shorter, and written for a less expert audience.
The best place to find any kind of article is the library website. The library website gives you access to millions of articles for free.
Believe it or not, many articles are not available for free on the open web. You'll want to use an article database -- a searchable collection of articles -- that the library pays for and makes available to you.
To find the library's list of databases, click the "Research Databases" link on the library website:
There are a few databases you will find particularly useful for art research:
You will be asked to login when you try to enter an article database. Login using your UA username and password (i.e., what you use for Blackboard).
Read the next sections to learn how to use Academic Search Premier and JSTOR.
JSTOR has a clean interface. In JSTOR you will see just one search bar. Enter your search terms:
In the search results you can click an article's title to see more details and get a page-by-page view inside your browser. Once again, you can also use the options on the left to filter out some search results.
Academic Search Premier has a lot of buttons and search boxes. Don't be overwhelmed. Focus on the search bars at the top of the page. Enter your search terms on the first search bar and click "Search":
You should then see articles that match your search terms. Use the "Filter" button (1) to open up a list of ways to filter out articles (2):
In this results page, you can narrow down your search results to peer reviewed items by clicking the "Peer reviewed" button and making sure your search results have the "Peer reviewed" indicator:
Finally, you can access the full text of articles by clicking "Access Options" or "Check Library for FulL Text."
Clicking the title of an article will give you a detailed record with a summary (or abstract) of the article; information on when and where it was published, and who wrote it; and a button to quickly and automatically generate a citation (this button looks like a quotation mark):
In the "Cite" popup, select "APA 7th Edition" or your prefered style from the "Select Style" dropdown menu.
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