Objective: Finding a Scholarly Journal Article in Archaeology

I. Select your search terms

• State your research topic:
  archaeology in Israel
• Identify the separate concepts that make up your topic:
  archaeology; Israel
• Make a list of search terms for each concept. Be sure to include synonyms, related terms, and terms that may be broader or narrower:
  archaeology: antiquities, excavations, prehistory
  Israel: Palestine, Holy Land, Jerusalem

II. Devise your search strategy

Based on your list(s) of search terms, devise your search strategy:

• use boolean operator OR; this tells the computer to search for all the terms at the same time:
  Israel or Palestine; archaeology or antiquities
• use boolean operator AND; this tells the computer to restrict retrieval to both concepts:
  Israel and archaeology
• use truncation (*) to broaden your search to include variants of a term:
  archaeolog* will retrieve archaeology, archaeological, archaeologists
  antiquit* will retrieve antiquities or antiquity
  
• use parentheses to group terms combined using OR :
  (Israel or Palestine) and (archaeolog* or antiquit*)

III. Conduct a search

To find journal articles, a great place to start is Academic Search Premier. This article database contains thousands of full-text articles from hundreds of magazines and journals, including many in anthropology and archaeology. To limit your search to scholary journal articles in Academic Search Premier, click on the box next to Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals.

IV. Locate the article

If the article is available as PDF Full Text in the article database you are using, download, email or print the article.

If the article is not available as PDF Full Text, click on the Linked Full Text or Find Full Text buttons to see if we have it in full text in another database.

If there are no Linked Full Text or Find Full Text buttons, or if it says that no full text is available when you follow any of the links, check the library's EJournals list to see if full text for the journal containing the article is available in another article database. This list will also tell you if we subscribe to the journal in print format.

If the article is only available in print, do a Journal Alphabetical search in our Online Catalog to identify the call number for the print journal. Recent issues of print journals are shelved by call number in the Current Periodicals area on the Middle Level of the library at the south end. Earlier issues are shelved by call number in bound volumes on the Top Level of the library.

If the article is not available either online or in print, use ILLiad (our online Interlibrary Loan system) to request a copy of the article from another library. This usually takes 2 to 4 days.

V. Verify that the article is scholarly

Use the criteria found on the library's Scholarly vs. Popular Articles guide to determine if the article is indeed scholarly. You should also verify this with your instructor.

Need Help?

• Visit the Reference Desk or call  626-6415 and speak to a reference librarian
• Online reference help via email: Ask-A-Librarian Service