Credo Reference (Encyclopedias for Background Information)
Consider beginning your research with the Credo Reference encyclopedia database. It includes subject-specific encyclopedias, which are not available on the free Internet. Try comparing some of these results with Wikipedia.
Check out these results for "Avant Garde" for example.
Tip for Best Database Experience
I highly recommend using the email feature in the databases once you find a good article or chapter. By doing so, you will receive all the descriptive information about the article, including the abstract and subject headings; the PDF when available; and the citation (although you need to select the citation style you are using). If you simply download the PDF, you won't have the citation and the other useful information.
Follow this permalink (another useful feature provided by databases) to view an example of an article about fan fiction. Notice the tools on the far right, including the email feature.
Some databases use the term "email" but others hide the email under "share," for example:
Recommended Databases for Most Research Topics
Ebook Central (E) This is a 100% full text book database. You can read online, download chapters, print chapters, and download most books for a limited time. The best bet is to download PDF chapters, which you can have permanently. There are other tools in the database, as well.
Academic Search Ultimate (A) A partly full-text article and indexing database that covers all academic disciplines. Academic or scholarly journal articles, trade publication articles, conference papers, and magazine and newspaper articles are here. Important: Click the “Search for Item” image if you don’t see a PDF or HTML link in an article. This is a powerful tool that searches all the other databases for the article. Try searching in the title or abstract for your terms. Put phrases between quotation marks.
JSTOR (J) is a huge full-text database of academic journal articles and book chapters. The database goes back to the 19th Century but may be lacking some of the most recently published material. Scroll down on the search page to narrow by discipline or journal title.
The default search is "Content I Can Access," but consider changing this to "Everything" since ILL is available to you. I do not recommend searching by abstract in JSTOR. Most results do not have abstracts included in JSTOR.
Project Muse (P) is an important full-text database for research in the humanities. It includes a lot of material published by university presses, both books and articles.
note: Pace subscribes to MANY other databases, as well. View them by selecting the SUBJECT drowpdown menu.