Research Guides: Subcultures and Scenes: Finding Articles

Database Search Tips

Here are tips for better search results in databases. This usage works on most databases, but check 'Help' sections for supported search syntax. Capitalize AND, OR, NOT so the database knows this is a command.

Boolean: (using operators: AND, OR, NOT)

graffiti AND new york city searches for occurrences of both words within scope defined.
graffiti OR street art searches for one or all, but both are not required.
graffiti NOT banksy searches for occurrences of the words ‘graffiti’ without use of the word ‘banksy.’
(graffiti NOT banksy) AND street art searches for occurrences of the words ‘graffiti’ without use of the word ‘banksy,’ then also requires the words ‘street art.’

Truncation:

art* searches for art, arts, artistic, artful, etc.

Wildcard:

m?n searches for man and men

General databases

General databases contain content from a variety of subject areas and publication types.

This will allow you to look at your research from a wide perspective. Be sure to use the search refinements each database may offer including: date, document type, and source type.

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Online collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographical sources, quotations, bilingual dictionaries, and measurement conversions covering topics from the arts to the sciences.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central is a large, multidisciplinary database with over 11,000 titles, with over 8,000 titles in full-text. It serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels in all markets. Over 160 subjects areas are covered extensively in this product including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides access to scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to journal articles, users can access book chapters, ebooks, and primary source documents.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from scholarly publishers.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is a central search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources, peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
EBSCO Discovery Service This link opens in a new window
EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) encompasses articles in databases across many disciplines. Users can locate peer reviewed articles, videos, audio files, images, and more from a range of subjects.

Full download of DRM-protected ebooks requires EBSCO account registration and Adobe Digital Editions.
Note: NYU Libraries is retiring EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) in June 2025. The Catalog Search replaces EDS as the tool for searching across multiple publishers’ databases and platforms. You can also use EBSCOhost to search across the full set of EBSCO-only databases.

Subject Specific databases

Rather than looking at Subcultures and Scenes from a narrow perspective, it is helpful to broaden your research and venture into other disciplines.

Here is a brief list of databases that may enhance your research:

SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
SocINDEX covers the sociology literature, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. It indexes scholarly journals, books, monographs, and conference papers.
GenderWatch This link opens in a new window
GenderWatch indexes scholarly, radical, community, and independent publications from 1970 to present relevant to gender, women's, and LGBTQ studies. It provides information from both academic and grassroots perspectives on a wide range of gender-related topics, such as sexuality, family, religion, societal roles, race and ethnicity, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, healthcare, and the workplace. Notable titles include Off Our Backs, Transgender Tapestry, Sister Namibia, and Out and About, among others.
Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new window
Gender: Identity and Social Change includes primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics. Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The earliest documents are from the nineteenth century and the latest from the early twenty-first century.
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture This link opens in a new window
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 gathers the raw data about crime, its solutions, and the popular response into one archive. It is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, and rare printed matter. The archive's focus is on the most rapid period of evolution for crime and its associated legal/penal systems: the long nineteenth century, a period of major social upheaval and technological development, from wars to the Industrial Revolution.
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900 This link opens in a new window
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900 includes a wide variety of works such as historical plays, melodramas, political satires, minstrel shows, comic operas, musical extravaganzas, parlor entertainments, adaptations of novels, and many others.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 This link opens in a new window
Rock and Roll explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history. It includes an interactive chronology, visual resources, video footage, and more.
PsycINFO via Ovid This link opens in a new window
PsycINFO via Ovid indexes core academic and professional literature in the psychological and behavioral sciences and their related disciplines. Coverage is from 1806 to the present. **Note that the database PsycINFO is also searchable on APA PsycNET platform.
PsycNET (with PsycINFO) This link opens in a new window
APA PsycNET is an integrated collection of databases from the American Psychological Association (APA), including the following: PsycINFO, PsycBOOKS, PsycTESTS, PsycTHERAPY, PsycARTICLES, and PsycEXTRA.

PsycINFO, the most popular database in PsycNET, is a bibliographic index covering core literature in the psychological and behavioral sciences and their related disciplines. PsycBOOKS includes online versions of the APA Handbooks in Psychology Series, as well as other ebooks and online encyclopedias published by APA. PsycTESTS is a source of structured information about psychological tests and measures as well as a repository for the full text of select instruments. PsycTHERAPY provides access to streaming psychotherapy demonstration videos.

Altogether, PsycNET provides information about and access to journal articles, books and ebooks, dissertations, conference presentations, tests and measures, videos, gray literature, and many other other publication types in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
To search only a specific database (e.g., PsycINFO) within the PsycNET interface, use the "Select Databases" features at the top of the PsycNET landing page and check (or uncheck) the database(s) that apply.
Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window
Anthropology Plus indexes core journals plus local and lesser-known journals in social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology; ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture; and interdisciplinary studies. Users can search both Anthropological Index and Anthropological Literature. Dates of coverage: Anthropological Index (1957 to present); Anthropological Literature (early 19th century to present) .
Communication and Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Communication and Mass Media Complete indexes and abstracts academic and trade journals in communications and mass media. Full-text is included for some titles. Conference proceedings are also available, including those of the International Communication Association.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960 - 1974 This link opens in a new window
The Sixties is a full text resource consisting of diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
The Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive offers digitized primary sources for studying the history of the film, music, theater, and broadcast industries from 1880 to the near present. Magazines include American Cinematographer, Back Stage, Billboard, Broadcasting, Hollywood Reporter, Mix, Musical Express, Radio and Records, Reggae & African Beat, Spin, Stage, Variety, and Writers Guild of America.
Education Source with ERIC This link opens in a new window
Education Source with ERIC provides access to research on all levels of education from early childhood to adult education. The content includes peer reviewed journal articles, ebooks, book reviews, dissertations, conference papers and policy reports on all topics in the realm of education.
Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
Performing Arts Periodicals Database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 210 international journals in the performing arts dating from 1864 to the near present.
eHRAF World Cultures This link opens in a new window
eHRAF World Cultures is a cross-cultural database that contains information on all aspects of cultural and social life. The annually-growing eHRAF database is unique in that the information is organized into cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.