Library homepage's 'Articles' tab

Pros:

• Gets a lot of results
• Searches across disciplines and covers most of the library's journal holdings
• Uses a fulltext search like Google ie. turns up all articles that have a particular word or phrase anywhere in the text

Cons:

• Often too many or irrelevant search results
• Searches across disciplines so you get many articles unrelated to your topic eg. articles about Apple Computers when you are searching for information about the fruit

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Subject specific databases e.g.. Anthropology Plus, AnthroSource

Pros:

• More focused or relevant search results
• Can search specifically for literature written within your discipline
• May be able to identify more important articles by checking how many times each article was cited

Cons:

• Fewer results
• Not every article listed in your search results is available through the library
• Most use 'controlled vocabularly' so you have to make sure you are searching for the topic with the right words.
  • Note: Some databases have a thesaurus which allows you to see which keywords to use for your search terms

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Google Scholar

Pros:

• Easy to use & searches across many different academic disciplines
• Also includes freely available articles outside of the library's collection

Cons:

• Many irrelevant search results
• Some articles that come up in the search results are not available to U of T users
  • Note: Make sure your Google Scholar preferances are connected to U of T