Our databases contain hundreds of millions of articles from all kinds of periodicals - scholary journals, popular periodicals, and newspapers. 

For the most part, these articles are merely electronic versions of the articles to be found in the actual printed periodicals. 

It is important to understand that these electronic articles are NOT considered Internet sources.  They are not "freebies" that you can find through a search in Google or Yahoo!  Our subscriptions to the databases are very expensive, and you have access to the individual articles only because you are a registered student at TCTC.

When you search a database, it quickly scans thousands of issues of many different periodicals to find a match for your search terms.

A database will show you which periodicals have articles on your topic.

Otherwise, you would have to look through each issue of each periodical for articles on your topic.