Research Guides: Philosophy: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Find Journal articles report the results of research by experts. Sometimes they're also called "peer-reviewed articles," "scholarly articles," or "academic articles." They are often used in academic research.

You should use journal articles because they:

Contain evidence based on research
Are written by experts
Focus on a narrow topic
Provide detailed information
Are probably more accurate because of the peer-review process
Lend credibility to your paper

Find journal articles in these databases:

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources across multiple disciplines within the arts and humanities.
Philosophy Online This link opens in a new window
Searchable access to the full text of hundreds of philosophy journals and series.
PhilPapers This link opens in a new window
PhilPapers is a comprehensive index of the research literature in philosophy, including an open access archive and the largest structured bibliography in the field.
Religion & Philosophy Collection This link opens in a new window
Religion & Philosophy Collection™ provides extensive coverage of such topics as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. With more more than 300 full text journals, the Religion & Philosophy Collection is an essential tool for researchers and students of theology and philosophical studies.
Religion Database This link opens in a new window
Religion Database provides a wide range of primarily full-text periodicals and other sources for diverse religious and spiritual studies, covering formal theological studies and commentary on topics of general interest from the perspectives of many worldwide religions. As well as scholarly journals there are many titles from religious publishing bodies and nondenominational organizations. The resource reflects a wide spectrum of religious belief systems and supports the global study of religion.

Books on a shelf Some books include research by experts, and you may want to use them in your research project.

You should use books because they:

Give a broad overview of one or more topics
Explain a complex topic (books are easier to understand than journal articles)
Offer in-depth analysis of a topic
Summarize previous research on a topic

Find books in these databases:

UNC Libraries Catalog
Searches books, eBooks, music, videos, and other items at the Michener and Skinner Libraries.
Prospector
Searches books at other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. Request books from these libraries and have them delivered to the Michener or Skinner Libraries.

Photographer takes self-portrait Images are the visual depictions of scholarly and creative works. Video represents a wide variety of streaming media sources including documentary films, concerts and recitals, lectures, demonstrations, experiments, animations, interviews, news stories, and feature films.

You should use images because they:

Supplement written explanations
Illustrate artistic or scientific themes or techniques
Explain concepts visually and/or auditorily
Convey conditions
Provide visual accounts of events, demonstrations, or performances

Find images and video in these databases:

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online is the most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers video titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. Curated for the educational experience, the massive depth of content and breadth of content-types (such as documentaries, films, demonstrations, etc.) makes this database a useful resource for faculty and students alike.
Alexander Street Press This link opens in a new window
Search or browse all of the collections licensed from Alexander Street Press. Types of resources from this publisher include video, audio, and music scores.

Letters Primary sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of an event, created by people who had a direct connection with it. You should use primary sources to provide direct evidence about how people thought, felt, and lived at the time.

Examples of primary sources include:

Diaries
Letters
Newspaper articles
Maps
Speeches
Interviews
Photographs
Physical artifacts

Find primary sources in these databases:

Defining Gender This link opens in a new window
Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
Disability in the Modern World This link opens in a new window
At completion, Disability in the Modern World will include 150,000 pages of primary sources, supporting materials, and archives, along with 125 hours of video. The content is essential for teaching and research—not only in the growing disciplines of disability history and disability studies, but also in history, media, the arts, political science, education, and other areas where the contributions of the disability community are typically overlooked.
Race Relations in America: 1943-1970 This link opens in a new window
Explore three pivotal decades in the struggle for civil rights in America through the eyes and work of sociologists, activists, psychologists, teachers, ministers, students and housewives. Sourced from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, this resource provides access to a wealth of documents highlighting different responses to the challenges of overcoming prejudice, segregation and racial tensions. These range from survey material, including interviews and statistics, to educational pamphlets, administrative correspondence, and photographs and speeches from the Annual Race Relations Institutes.
Sex & Sexuality This link opens in a new window
This collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and personal accounts.
Users will be confronted with a screen with the following information:
Sex & Sexuality makes accessible the unpublished papers of prominent sexologists, sex researchers, societies, advocacy groups and campaigners working across America and beyond during the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries.

The collection also includes a significant proportion of correspondence between professional and private individuals, autobiographical accounts, official records and literary works.

Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period, between 1490 and 2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social-justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

Search Effectively

Yellow, blue, and purple keys Unlike Google, library databases can't understand complete sentences. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important concepts, also called keywords, and use those keywords to search library databases.

Example topic: How does social media impact happiness among teenagers?

Keywords: social media, happiness, teenagers

Brainstorm synonyms:

Sometimes experts use different terms than we use in everyday conversation. It's important to think of synonyms and related terms for your keywords so that you can use different combinations of words to get the best results when searching.

Keyword: teenagers

Synonyms: adolescents, youth

Library databases often have built-in search tools. Try them out!

Peer-Reviewed: Limit your search to journal articles.
Discipline: Limit your search to a particular discipline (such as psychology or education).
Publication Date: Limit your search to sources published during certain years.
Subject Terms: These are like library hashtags. Limit your search to sources about that subject.

Quotation marks Experts often cite each other's work, and that can help you find more sources on your topic!

To find older relevant sources:

Find the list of sources at the end of a relevant source you've found. This may be called "bibliography," "works cited," or "references."
Look for titles in the list that relate to your topic.
Copy and paste relevant titles into a library database.

To find newer relevant sources:

When you find a relevant source in a database, look for a link called "Cited by."
Click this link to see more recent sources that may be related to your topic.