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The library has hundreds of databases and sometimes it's hard to know which one to
use. In this tutorial, you will learn how to find a library database, which you can
search for articles about a specific topic. Imagine you are a student writing a paper
about how violence in video games affects children. You have to find at least three
scholarly sources about this topic. First, go to the Library's main page at lib.umich.edu.
Now, consider what academic subject fits your topic. Since your topic is violence in video
games and how it affects children, you could look for information in communication studies
or psychology. In this tutorial, we're going to look for a comm studies database using
the Browse feature. To use the Browse feature, open the box labeled "Recommended Resources
by Subject." You will need to know that comm studies is a social science so click
on that one. A new box will appear with the title "Narrow your selection." Open that
box and choose comm studies. Then, click Go. This page, labeled "Browse Results for Communication
Studies" lists recommended journals, research guides, and databases for this subject. Look
for the "Databases" section on this page. Library database index many journal articles,
often on one broad subject such as comm studies. Because these database concentrate on just
one subject, they make it easy to search for articles within that subject. You can click
on any of these links in this section to go directly to a database. For this example,
click on "Communication and Mass Media Complete." If you are off-campus, you may be asked to
log in at this point. Type in "violence," "video games," and "children." Click
on search to view a list of articles that match your search terms. Look through the
results to find the best sources for your paper. Remember, at the University of Michigan
there are hundreds of useful databases to help you find scholarly articles. Use the
Browse feature on the Library's web site to find one that matches your topic.