NE2V13003 Dutch Literature III: The Middle Ages: Articles

When searching for literature relevant to your topic, we always recommend using more than one search engine, because there is often an interdisciplinary aspect to studying the Medieval period, crossing boundaries between the tradional subject areas. 

Your primary starting point should be  BNTL, which can be supplemented with DBNL, WorldCat and/or Google Scholar.

In addition, you can chose specific search engines on Dutch Literature and the Middle Ages listed by the library.

Most journals can be found and accessed through WorldCat, if you have trouble finding a journal in our collection: there is also a complete a-z list of all electronic journals in the collection of the library.

Another fruitful way to find articles is by following the literature references and citations from and to earlier found articles.

In the LibGuide Search Strategy  you will find more information.

Google Scholar is a large search engine for scholarly publications. It searches primarily journal articles and, contrary to almost all other search engines, searches the full text. From Google Books the data of a large number of scientific books are included in Google Scholar. Also in this respect Google Scholar differs from classical scientific search engines such as Scopus or Web of Science.

Google Scholar's special features listed:

• you search articles as well as (a selection of) books
• your search is full text, so you will also find sources in which your search terms are only touched upon
• Google Scholar does not tell you what publications are included and what publications are not: you will have to find out by trial and error
• the journal selection is less strict than in Web of Science or Scopus: as a result you will also find non-peer reviewed material
• the order of results is also based on the number of received citations: that is why more recent publications are harder to find; always use the menu to filter on recent years!
• if you want to have links to Refworks you must choose this as your Bibliography Manager in the preferences
• only if you access Google Scholar via the Utrecht University Library website you will be shown the UBUlink next to the titles

In the special Google Scholar LibGuide  you will find all you want to know about successfully using this remarkable search engine

In WorldCat you can find the printed (meaning non-digital) material from the Utrecht University Library collections. The real time availability for every item can be seen on the results page. You will also be able to see where the journal is located in the library.​

If you do not see the location directly in the results, click on the title for more information.

Requesting and borrowing

Not all print journals can be borrowed. The last ten years of journals are only available for photocopying on the open shelves of the library in the inner city. Print journals older than ten years are kept in the closed stacks and must always be requested through WorldCat. If items are on loan you can make a reservation.

In your search for scholarly literature you may sometimes find the UBU-link. This link provides information about the availability of digital publications via the University Library.  Sometimes the UBU-link is in the form of a yellow button, but it can also be a text link.

Want to know more about all options to access digital publications? Visit our Online Access page.