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ENGL 500

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a valuable search tool for doing research, especially for finding citation information in the humanities.

Use the Library links option in Settings for Google Scholar, to add the University of British Columbia. Links to content available through UBC Library will display with your Google Scholar search results.

On the Google Scholar page, Sign In if you have a Google or gmail account.

After you sign in:

  1. Click on "Settings" and then "Library Links"
  2. Search for University of British Columbia then select and save the "University of British Columbia - UBC eLink" result.

If you do not have a Google or gmail account, just go to the menu on the upper left, select "Settings" and follow through as above.

In your search results, click on UBC eLink to access resources UBC Library subscribes to.

Off-campus users will be asked to authenticate using a CWL, before they can link to articles.

Web of Science

Web of Science consists of six databases containing information gathered from thousands of scholarly journals and conference proceedings, in all subject areas, despite the name. It includes the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, and the Social Sciences Citation Index. In addition to cited reference searching, you can search this database by topic, author, source title, and address. It is an excellent database to use for searching interdisciplinary topics.

Let's start by conducting a basic search for articles by Dr. Suzy Anger.

  • Enter: anger, s* in the search box and change the index to Author.
  • In Editions above, limit your search to Arts & Humanities Citation Index and click Search. (Note: Web of Science uses only initials for first names of authors and an asterisk will broaden your search.)
  • You can refine the results by Document Types (e.g. Book Reviews, Articles etc.) or Web of Science Categories (e.g. Literature, Folklore, etc.).
  • Finally, you can use Sort by at the top of the list and adjust your results from Relevance to other options such as Date: newest first
  • Click on the title of a specific article. On the right you can see who cited this article and also find other relevant articles by clicking on the Citations, Cited References, and View Related Records links. This allows you to analyze the results in various ways and find other related materials.

You can also do cited reference search in the Web of Science database. Assume you discovered an interesting journal article or a book, and you want to find other articles that have cited 'your' article or book. For example, try a citation search for Judith Butler's 1988 article in Theatre Journal "Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory".

  • On the main search screen select CITED REFERENCES
  • In corresponding boxes enter Cited Author (Butler J*), Cited Work (Theatre Journal) and Cited Year(s) (1988)
  • Click on Search
  • You can now explore over 1,000 works that have cited "Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory" since 1988 and Refine results by applying filters of your choice.

For more information, see: Getting started with Web of Science.