"LibrarySearch" box on the library homepage

Pros:

• a gigantic collection of full-text journal articles
• easy to use
• the best place to find a specific article (where you already know the article title)
• covers all disciplines, which is good if your topic is interdisciplinary
• searches within the entire text of each article, which is good for finding every mention of an obscure topic

Cons:

• searches within the entire text of each article, so you often get irrelevant articles, where your topic is only briefly mentioned
• covers all disciplines, so you may get irrelevant results from other disciplines

Subject-specific article databases (like the Performing Arts Periodicals Database, or MLA)

Pros:

• Search results are usually relevant
• Special search features that are helpful for a particular discipline (such as a check box to limit to theatre reviews)
• Indexed by human beings using a thesaurus of controlled vocabulary that is helpful for a particular discipline

Con:

• Sometimes too few search results
• Sometimes harder to search
• Sometimes harder to retrieve the articles:
  • Click on  
  • If there are no links to your article, try searching for the journal title in the library catalogue
  • If the journal is not there, you can try ordering the article through interlibrary loan