Basic Catalog
Using call numbers to locate items.
Basic Database Searching
Using databases to find articles on topics, retrieving Full-text articles, and using limiters.
2. Introduction
When you are doing research in college, your professors will specify that you
use scholarly journals, academic journals or peer-reviewed journals when
writing to support your ideas, your papers and projects.
3. Anatomy of a Scholarly Article
Both Scholarly and Popular Articles are found in Publications known as Periodicals
Taken from http://libraries.ucsd.edu/bmcl/dturnbow/bimm121-library-tutorial/player.html
4. Scholarly Articles
Scholarly articles are found in Journals; sometimes referred to
as Academic articles or Peer-Reviewed articles. They are written
by experts and evaluated by other experts before they are
published through a process called peer-review. Examples are:
Journal of Folklore Research and The Yale Journal of Criticism
5. Popular Articles
Popular articles are found in Magazines. They are used to inform and
entertain the general public. Examples are: Time, Essence and Ebony
7. Start your Investigation/Search
Choose an Topic:
The Decline of African American Marriages
Ask a Question to narrow or focus your topic.
Why has the traditional marriage between African Americans declined?
Keywords: African American Marriage, Decline
8. Research Can Be Targeted By:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Race
4. Women
5. Children
6. Elderly
9. AND, NOT, OR
Three Boolean operators can create a very broad or
very narrow search.
And takes precedence over Or
Results contain all of the search terms
Not
Results do not contain any of the terms
Or
Results contain at least one of the terms
10. Limiters
In some Databases, you can use search limiters to
find scholarly journals
Others, such as Opposing Viewpoints will group
results into categories by article type, including
academic journals. Databases such as JSTOR and
Medline only have scholarly articles.
Limiter
Category
11. More on Limiters
Use “quotation marks” to ensure your keywords appear in the order you specified
“African American” and Marriage
Use parentheses to show that you can control your search query
African American Marriage or (Blacks)
African American Marriage and (Blacks and relationships)
Operators, And and Not take priority over terms with Or.
Terms in parentheses are executed first
12. Internet vs Library’s Database
Internet (Google)
Quick but not relevant
Anyone can publish
Questionable authority
May take a long time to get quality information
Less reliable
Databases
Less results but relevant
Specialize in scholarly sources
Quality Information
Easy to search
Identifiable authority
13. EVALUATING THE INTERNET
APPLY THE CRAAP TEST
CRAAP questions to consider:
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14. Find a Scholarly Article in an EsbcoHost Database
There are four steps:
1. Conduct your search.
2. In your results list, click on the title of the article you wish to
view.
3. Click on source. The source is name of the journal.
4. Look for peer-reviewed and it should say yes. If it does not say
yes, it is not scholarly.
15. Steps 1-3Step 1-conduct search
Step 2-click the title of the article
Step 3- click journal title
Evaluating information from the web involves questioning. Is it good information? Or is it CRAAP?
CRAAP is an acronym for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose, this is the criteria used to evaluate information.
This is your library! We are here to assist you.
Subject guides have been created by Librarians to help you identify resources for your assignment or subject. The subject guide link can be found under the research tab on the homepage. We also have instructional mini-tutorials on a variety of subjects found in iTunes U.
