If you regularly use Google or Google Scholar to find information, you will be happy to know there now is a similar search interface on the UW Madison Libraries' website.  Article Search offers a Google-like box to easily locate scholarly e-resources, journal articles, and more.  These resources are harvested from publishers' indexes and open-access repositories as well as from many of the UW Madison Libraries' actual online journal subscriptions.

Although Article Search contains millions of article records, it does not include content from every UW Madison database subscription such as Lexis and Westlaw.  And you still need to use the library catalog to locate campus book and e-book holdings.

That said, Article Search is a great place to start your research, particularly if you are not sure where exactly to begin.  Type in a search like "gun control" and over 300,000 documents appear. There are numerous features to quickly refine and sort these results. You can also browse Database Titles Organized by Subject & Type. For example, click on the Law subject heading to see a concise compilation of legal databases you may not even be aware of.  Another handy grouping is Database Type where you can search specific campus collections such as data sets, dissertations, patents and newspapers.

Using Article Search will make it much easier to troll for information and to access the abundance of campus resources.

Submitted by Cheryl O'Connor on January 16, 2013

This article appears in the categories: Law Library