Skip to Main Content

Soil Sci 531

A library research guide to assist you with your Soil Sci 531 research

Essential Agriculture Scholarly Databases

You can find scholarly research by searching a large multidisciplinary databases or by a searching smaller agricultural-specific database.

There are advantages to each database. If I'm really trying to be thorough, I will utilize several databases. 

Note: There may be significant, but not complete, overlap in coverage within these databases.

Best Databases for Finding Agricultural Science Research

The Washington State University Library Catalog (Search It) locates pretty much everything you'd hope to find on a subject. This includes journal articles, books, newspapers, multimedia, extension resources, archival materials, etc. You will get the most search results using Search It.

Web of Science is a mostly STEM database. Although it will return less search results than Search It, they will typically be more scholarly. Web of Science has a terrific interface which allows the user to easily find useful research based on articles they have already found.

AGRICOLA is an agricultural sciences scholarly database. This database will return less search results than the previous two databases, but those results will more pertinent to your research. AGRICOLA is maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library. 

If you are interested in what databases are available to you at WSU, check out this comprehensive list.

Other Useful Scholarly Databases

Utilizing Google Scholar & The WSU Libraries

Google Scholar has its benefits and drawbacks. It's certainly not my go-to database when doing scholarly research but it can be useful.

If you are using Google Scholar I recommend you utilize "Library Links" in Google Scholar. By doing this you will link Google Scholar to the WSU Libraries' catalog. This will make some items more discoverable and will also allow you to open subscription full-text PDFs in Google Scholar,

Follow these steps to sync the WSU Libraries' catalog to Google Scholar (click on any image to make it larger).

 

Google Scholar Preferences

1. Go to scholar.google.com and select the hamburger menu (three short parallel lines) in the upper left

 

Google Scholar settings

2. Select Settings,

 

Google Scholar Library Links option

3. Select Library Links

 

Search for WSU Libraries

4. Do a search for Washington State University and select all options

Note: that I have also selected Open WorldCat; this will offer you the chance to move from the freely available Open WorldCat to the WSU Libraries WorldCat Discovery catalog (this is a great resource for locating books not available in Search It or via Summit ). Open WorldCat should be there by default, but if it is not just search and add the links for the WSU Libraries, then do another search for Open WorldCat and add it then.

WSU Libraries, PO Box 645610, Washington State University, Pullman WA 99164-5610, 509-335-9671, Contact Us