What if NU Library does not have the article that I need?
Some databases provide full text while others only provide references to articles. Use the purple "Find it @ NU" button 
to locate full text access to the article.
If an article is not available at Northwestern University Library, you may request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL). See here to submit a request.
Finding Articles
- Academic Search Complete
This multidisciplinary database provides access to articles from journals, magazines, and reference sources across all subject areas. Coverage is primarily from 1980 to the present, with some older content.
- GeoRef
GeoRef provides access to the geosciences literature of the world. It covers topics like geochemistry and environmental geology, which may be relevant for the soil science project. For building your query, first identify key terms. Then, combine those terms using AND or OR. AND narrows down your search, while OR broadens it. See the "How to build a search query" tab for more information.
- Web of Science
Multidisciplinary database that covers more than 12,000 journals. It is a good place for doing broad searches.
Web of Science is designed to search using keywords (if you are not sure what a keyword is, watch this video). Keywords are combined by using AND, OR, SAME, NEAR, and NOT (this video may be helpful if you want to learn how to combine keywords using operators). Web of Science will assume that you are using AND if you don't specify any operator. For instance, if you enter: lead waste Illinois, it will assume that you are searching: lead AND waste AND Illinois.
Web of Science has very powerful refining capabilities. If your search retrieves too many results, you have many different ways to limit it. Try, for instance, to refine it by document type (e.g. article), publication years, research areas, or by entering a new keyword.
Web of Science tracks citation information (i.e. how many times an article has been cited and what articles have cited that particular article). This allows you to sort your search results by number of citations to try to determine the articles thay had more impact in a field ("Times Cited -- highest to lowest" in the Sort by tab).
- Google Scholar
Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives.
- Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management
This multidisciplinary database provides comprehensive coverage of the environmental sciences. Abstracts and citations are drawn from scientific journals, conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications.