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
**************************************************************************************
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
*************************************************************************************
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