Research Guides: PHIL 150 Truth: What is it? Why Care About it? (Fall 2023): Types of Databases (And why it matters)

Types of Databases

Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window
Philosophy and related fields. Citations to journal articles, books, book chapters, and book reviews. Coverage: 1940-present. Access available to unlimited users.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

PRIMO (main library catalog)
This interfaces searches about 60% of our databases all at once, making it a good middle ground between traditional databases & google scholar.

PROS: searches multiple databases at once ; fairly easy to use ; quick access ; has some metadata & abstracts ; lets you see author's other publications
CONS: will return TONS of results, requiring limiting results ; will return results outside of your disciplinary focus ; will return a lot of newspapers; requires time to master.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary full-text journal articles from 1,500 major journals. Please note: In many cases, JSTOR does not include the most recent 3 to 5 years of these journals. Please use other databases to retrieve recent articles, especially for current events topics. Coverage: Varies by title. Access is available to 2007+ alumni; requires W&M userid and password.