Course Guide ~ COMM 316 / Digital Divides

Scholarly Sources

The Hamilton Library Catalog and most of the article databases available through the library allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed or scholarly journals. However, it can often be very helpful to limit your searches to journals that publish scholarship related to a particular field of study by using a subject-specific database. For the communication field, that database is Communication & Mass Media Complete. The interdisciplinary nature of the field also make other subject databases good options for expanding your searches in the fields of psychology, sociology, and education.

Searching Communication & Mass Media Complete

Communication & Mass Media Complete is the primary subscription database available through Hamilton that indexes the scholarly literature of the communication field.

1. Enter 1-3 words in the search box
2. View Subject: Thesaurus Term and Subject headings to see if the words used by the database match your keywords
3. Redo your initial search using new keywords from the headings (if necessary)
4. Use the Select a Field option to search within the "SU Subject" Terms" field if the number of results is unmanageable
5. Limit To: "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals"
6. Limit your search further by adding another keyword