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Graphic & Digital Design: Find Journal Articles

A guide to resources for Graphic design

Searching in Library Databases

Use the subject specific database below to search for focused articles on your digital design topic.

Recommended Keyword Strategies

Use the asterisk (*) as a truncation symbol with the root of a word to expand your results.
- For example, using advertis* as your keyword will retrieve, advertising, advertisement(s), advertiser(s).
- Photograph* for photography, photographic, photographer, photographers
Advertising
- Use medium of advertising, print, online, social media, etc.
Use more specific terms when possible.
- Names of artists or photographers
- Instead of
  - Advertising
    - Use medium of advertising: print advertising, online advertising, social media advertising
    - Logos or logo design
  - Printing
    - Use specific types of formatted materials, posters, business cards, etc. or elements such as typography
Type or format of photography
- Black and white, color, digital, still, documentary, commercial
Use specific terms for processing or digital techniques

Browse Graphic Design Journals This link opens in a new window

Recommended Databases

Communications and Mass Media This link opens in a new window
Full Text
Powered by InfoTrac, the Communications & Mass Media Collection brings together information found in more than 400 journals. Nearly 3 million articles on all aspects of the communications field, including advertising, public relations, linguistics, and literature, meet the needs of researchers.
Computer Science Database by ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Full Text
ProQuest's Computer Science Database contains 4.2 million full text articles from over 500 sources covering information on virtually any computing topic including artificial intelligence, games, graphics, networks, programming, security, systems, database management, data processing, hardware, software, and information science. The database includes product reviews, database design and management, software, hardware, e-commerce, Web site development, intranets and extranets, and technology management.
Fine Arts & Music Collection This link opens in a new window
Full Text
The Fine Arts & Music Collection is a periodical database that places 10.4 million articles at the fingertips of students of drama, music, art history, and filmmaking. More than 250 journals covered in databases such as the Wilson Art Index and the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) index are available in full text.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full Text
JSTOR combines scholarship and primary sources on one platform, which strengthens the depth and quality of research. Content includes over 2,800 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, over 100,000 ebooks, and 2 million primary sources of artifacts, specimens, and documents. Access to thousands of Open Access journal articles, books, and high-quality images is also provided.
Pop Culture Collection This link opens in a new window
Full Text
The Pop Culture Collection provides access to scholarly journals and magazines that both analyze and contribute to popular culture. The database offers useful information for researchers in social science, history, art or liberal arts courses.

Tips for Using Library Databases

New to research in databases? View the tips below for the basics of what databases are and how they work.

What is a Database?

A library database is a collection of information, organized to make the storage and retrieval of resources easier and accessible to more people. Basically, it’s an electronic catalog or index for published materials. These materials most commonly include magazine, newspaper, and journal articles. Often, other items like books and videos are also included in databases. The database is like the bookcase that holds all these materials.

Databases are highly organized and allow searching for information on a topic by keyword, subject, author, title, and short phrases. Most databases at the GCU Library provide access to full-text content, which means that you will find entire articles available, not just the abstracts or summaries of articles.

What is a Scholarly Source?

Scholarly Resources: Scholarly resources are written with a focus on a specific subject discipline and usually written by an expert in the same subject field. Scholarly resources are written for an academic audience.

Examples of Scholarly Resources include: Academic journals, books written by experts in a field, and formally published encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Primary Sources: “Original records created by participants or observers at the time historical events occurred or well after events, as in memoirs and oral histories." ( ALA 2008 ).

Examples of Primary Sources include:Photographs, letters, historical documents, data sets, and audio recordings.

Peer Reviewed Journals: Peer Reviewed journals are evaluated prior to publication by experts in the journal’s subject discipline. This process ensures that the articles published within the journal are academically rigorous and meet the required expectations of an article in that subject discipline.

Empirical Article : This type of scholarly resource is a subset of scholarly articles that reports the original finding of an observational and/or experimental research study. Common aspects found within an empirical article include: literature review, methodology, results, and discussion.

Boolean Operators

The Boolean Operator ‘ **and**’ retrieves articles that contain ALL terms
**Narrows**the search

The Boolean Operator ‘ or’
retrieves articles with either/any of the terms
**Broadens**the search

The Boolean Operator ‘ **not**’ eliminates articles that have this term
**Narrows**the search

How They Are Used

**AND**
**cat AND dog**Using **AND**, this search would retrieve results with cats AND dogs

OR
**cat OR dog**Using OR, this search would retrieve results with cats, with dogs, and with both

**NOT**
**cat NOT dog**Using **NOT**, this search would retrieve results with cats, and exclude those with dogs, or cats and dogs

Using Boolean Operators

Boolean Operators in Action

Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) can be typed into the search line with your search terms, like this: cat AND dog, cat OR dog, cat NOT dog.
This image shows what it looks like in the database search box:

You can also use the dropdown box the database has provided, and type a term (cat) in the first line, change the dropdown box to the Boolean term you want to use ( AND, OR, NOT ), and put your second term (dog) in the box beside the dropdown menu. This image shows what this technique looks like in the database search box:

You can also combine the truncation technique with the Boolean operator. This image shows cat* AND dog* (truncated with the asterisk at the end of the root of your search term to include all possible endings for cat and dog).

To broaden our search even more we can include synonyms, truncation, and Boolean operators. In this search we have searched for: [cat* or feline or kitten*] AND [dog or canine or pup*].

Truncation

What is it?

Truncation is an easy way to search for multiple versions of a word.

How does it work?

Remove the end of the word (leaving the root of the word) and replace the ending with an asterisk *.

Why should I use truncation?

It saves time, and will expand your search to include all versions of the word. When you search in a database you are trying to identify keywords and subject terms; truncating a word will give you a greater chance of finding articles on your topic.

How To Do It

For our example , we'll use the word nurse:

An article about nurses might say nurse, nurses, or nursing.

We will keep the root word, nurs, and replace the possible endings with an asterisk: nurs*.

Another example: leadership.

An article about leadership might talk about leader, leaders, or leadership.

We will keep the root word, leader, and replace the possible endings with an asterisk: leader*.

Using Truncation

Truncation In Action

When you break your topic down to keywords, it's likely that there are many versions of that word. Including all of the possible versions will help make sure you find articles on that topic. This example shows multiple forms of the word leader (leader, leaders, leadership):

Truncation means you shorten the word to the root, and replace the endings with an asterisk. In this example we have only the word leader*, and we will get the same results as before when we included all forms of that term.

In this example, we are starting with multiple forms of the word nurse (nurse, nurses, nursing):

And we can truncate the word to nurs* and get the same results:

Keywords

Don't search for full sentences. Search with keywords and synonyms instead, and always check your spelling --For example, if my assignment question is 'How do libraries help college students?' I would search for the terms library, college or university or higher education, and students - this image shows how this can be put into the search box:

This example uses Boolean operators and truncation - two search tools you can use to improve your search technique.

Limiting Search Results

Many databases provide a menu next to each search box where a field limiter can be selected. Each search box has its own field menu, so you can search different fields for each of your terms.