Search for information
Search Belk Library's online system to find both library materials and articles in our databases. Use the search box below to do a basic search on library materials and databases.
Find Articles in English and Spanish
All of these databases let you search in English, but allow you to limit your results to just Spanish articles.
- Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new windowCMMC offers full text and cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for journals covering communication, mass media, linguistics, discourse, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, communication theory, language, logic, organizational communication and other closely related fields of study.
- Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new windowLiterature & the literary arts, philosophy, the arts, history, culture, and creative thought. Journal articles, books, and other sources from around the world.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowIndex to scholarly research pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore, 1963-present.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowIndex and abstracts of sociology, anthropology, criminology, demography, education law and penology, race relations, social psychology and urban studies. 1963-
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowHistorical Abstracts covers modern world history (excluding the United States and Canada which are covered in America: History and Life) from 1450 to the present.
- Databases listed by subjectI can't list all of them! But if your topic doesn't seem covered by the databases listed above, click here to find more possibilities.
Find Articles in Spanish
These databases are just in Spanish. Remember to use Spanish search terms! So not "education" but "educacion".
- Hispanic American Periodicals Index This link opens in a new windowAuthoritative, worldwide information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
A note about keywords
Finding the right keywords is one of the most challenging parts of the research process. Even for librarians!
For this assignment, there may not be a lot of Spanish (or English!) scholarly sources written directly about your topic. Typically popular music and graphic novels are not covered in scholarly research - though that is changing in the English-language research at least. So to find an appropriate Spanish source, you might have to broaden your search.
Here are some examples of topics about which you might find scholarly sources in Spanish:
- Background research - do you need more historical or sociological context? What do you know about political African immigration to Spain? Or poverty in Mexico?
- Genre research - how does your cultural product fit in with others? How are Argentinian filmmakers portraying economic issues? What is the history of comics and graphic novels in South America?
Also, keep in mind that the databases don't always use the same vocabulary you do. If one term doesn't work, try another.
- Graphic novels = comics = manga
- Films = motion pictures = movies = cinema
More tips:
- Search the film's title in Spanish and English. If the words of the title are common (like Norte or North), put the film's title in quotation marks.
- Search using the director's name. Try it with the title, or just alone. Sometimes articles about the director's style in other films will also be relevant to the film you chose.
- Try the searches in multiple places. Even though the databases are all "Ebsco," they have different articles in them.