Library Basics

Article databases provide a way to search for articles on particular subjects in magazines or journals. Databases my include the full-text and/or graphics of articles, or they may only include the author, title, date, journal title, issue and page numbers for each article.

Articles from periodicals (magazines, newspapers, or scholarly journals) cannot be found in the online library catalog.

To find an article on a topic, use a library periodical database such as:
- Academic Search Premier for magazines or journals
- Lexis-Nexis Academic for newspapers
While articles can be found searching the public Web, articles that are found using a library database are:
- From published periodicals
- Free to you (The library pays the subscription fee.)
- Indexed, so that you can search through many years of thousands of articles to find a manageable list of specific articles that are relevant to your topic
- The types of articles that your professors will expect you to use in your assignments
Many databases, and these two in particular, provide the full text of the article, which you can print, email or download.

When you are on campus you can access these databases simply by being logged in to the Marshall University network.

If you are off campus, you must login when prompted by entering your MU ID number (your “901” number) and your 4-digit PIN, which is your birthday (MMDD).

Library Basics Links