Sometimes Search It is picky with your search terms, and you don't get what you need - it happens to everyone! You can also using Google Scholar to do your searches (which is better at natural language searching), and then link back to the catalog to discover if we have an article. Here are basic instructions, with a link to more detailed instructions below:
Detailed instructions and screenshots are at the link below:
Search It is a good place to start exploring your options for journal articles. This "discovery system" pulls resources from numerous databases and puts it into one place (like a search engine). When you know more about your topic it is best to search specific databases (listed below) to get more focused results.
To use Search It, type in your keywords and select Peer-Reviewed under Availability and Articles under Type. You'll then either click on Download Article, or click on the title and scroll down to Access Options, and click on the database link. Make sure you are logged into Search It.
The examples below or broad, but you will want to try searching for specific countries or groups; specific events; or specific organizations. Searching only "racism" or "united states expansionism" will bring back too many results. Also, if necessary, try to search for multiple variations of the place or population name. Further, if you are specifically looking for History articles, you will want to make sure the journal is published in the discipline of history. We will talk more about this in a library session.
These databases index scholarly/academic journals. You may also find dissertations, conference proceedings, book reviews, magazine articles, and books among your search results, but each of these databases allows you to limit your results to academic journals. These allow you to target your searches a little better in history; further, you can select your subject area when doing your searches so it will limit to journals in that field.
Your research might intersect with additional subject areas, such as politics, medicine, and religion. The databases below are specialized subject databases indexing resources in disciplines that might relate to your topic. After searching the standard subject databases for history (listed above) you might also try searching for your topic in a secondary relevant subject database. There are MANY more available - click on the Databases button underneath the main search box on the libraries homepage.