Guides: Critical Writing: Urban Invasion: Overview

Scholarly Databases

These databases will help you find scholarly articles about your topic

Articles+
Articles+ searches through many of our Penn-subscribed journals, and brings you results all in one place.

Google Scholar
Access to Google Scholar with Penn-only links to full-text articles. Once authenticated through Penn's proxy, full-text articles to which Penn Libraries subscribe will become available within the Google Scholar search results.
JSTOR
JSTOR specializes in making available the back issues of journals in a wide variety of humanities and social science disciplines. Issues are available both as images and as text, making searching possible both within each title and across the whole database.

Penn's subscription currently includes all the available collections:
- the Arts & Sciences Collection I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and the Complement
- the Business II & III Collection
- the Biological Sciences Collection
- the Health & General Science Collection
- the Language and Literature Collection
- the Music Collection
- the 19th Century British Pamphlets
Access to journals from JSTOR is restricted to current Penn faculty, staff and students.

Printing from the JSTOR database requires downloading a helper application called JPrint.
EBSCO MegaFILE
General, multidisciplinary periodical database, covering all scholarly disciplines, with many general and popular magazines, and news sources. Includes bibliographic citations with indexing and abstracts for more than 16,000 periodicals.
Urban Studies Abstracts
Bibliographic citations with abstracts describing scholarly literature in all aspects of urban studies. Topics include trends in urbanization, urban history, architecture and urban design, housing and real estate, urban development and redevelopment, urban planning and land use, environment and resource conservation, transporation and communication, crime and law enforcement, urban economics, social services and public services, politics and government, urban fiscal and budgetary policy, and social issues.

Search for databases by subject

Background Resources

These resources provide contextual information.

Encyclopedia of urban studies
This encyclopedia covers the various academic disciplines that contribute to urban studies, including urban anthropology, urban economics, urban geography, urban history, urban politics, urban sociology, academic programmes that build upon these disciplines and professional fields that comprise urban studies.
Encyclopedia of American urban history
Edited by one of the leading scholars of urban studies, this encyclopedia offers an accurate and authoritative historical approach to the dramatic urban growth experienced in the United States during the 20th century.

Why use this guide?

This Critical Writing Program guide will help you to:

Read a citation
Find books and articles using citations and keywords
Choose the best scholarly resources for your topic
Get personalized assistance!

How to Read a Citation

	Book citations generally show a publisher and a city of publication. Book chapters will include the title of the chapter as well as the name of the book.
	Article citations have a journal/periodical title in addition to the article title. They will usually also show a volume and issue number, and may show a day and month.

Using Citations to Find Articles

If you have a complete article citation, search Articles+ to find the full text of your article.

No luck? That doesn't mean we don't have access to the article - it could be in print! Try using the PennText Article Finder as a next step. You can find PennText on the Library homepage.

To find the full-text of an article, enter the journal name into the PennText article finder. A pop-up box will give you options to access the article online, in print, or the option to request through interlibrary loan.

Using Citations to Find Books

If your citation is a book, use Franklin, the Library catalog. Franklin will help you find the library in which the book is located, and the call number.

You can search for a specific book by title, author, or ISBN. You can also do a keyword or subject keyword search to find books on a particular topic.