At the top of this list are links to business and marketing resources; and because research into human behavior can also be helpful, the two links at the bottom are to the primary psychology and sociology databases OSU subscribes to.

Why can't you just use Google to find journal articles? Actually, you can, especially if you use their special search engine; Google Scholar is a good place to find articles. But it has its drawbacks.

Let's say your instructor said you have to find articles that were published within the last 5 years and they need to be from a peer-reviewed journal. How do you do that in Google Scholar? You can limit a search in Google Scholar to a particular time period.

What's harder is to determine if the journal article is peer-reviewed. It is easier to do this in a database, which often has tools that let you limit searches to peer-reviewed or refereed content. Not everything that you find in Google Scholar is scholarly, let alone peer-reviewed.

You will also often find that many of the articles you locate on Google Scholar are not actually available to you. Frequently on Google Scholar you find a citation only to discover you have to pay $$$ for it. If you use the library databases and if the library has a subscription to the journal, you'll have immediate access to the article for free. If the library does not have the journal, we can get it for you through interlibrary loan (also for free).

You will find things in Google Scholar that you don't find in the databases. But you'll also find a lot of things in databases not included in Google Scholar. So for a more complete search, you'll probably end up using both the databases and Google Scholar for your research.

You can set up Google Scholar so it will search in OSU's databases for your article (so you won't have to pay extra to someone to access it).

Step 1:  To make Google Scholar talk to the OSU Libraries collection, go to the Settings link, located on the top right corner of the page:

Step 2:  On the left-hand side of the Scholar Settings page, choose Library links:

Step 3:  Next either search for Oregon State University in the search box or simply use the checkbox next to Oregon State University (NOT Oregon State University Libraries!)