Composition II

Professor Wilcox
Spring 2007

Getting Started

Most research projects start with getting some general information on your topic. This means using encylcopedias, dictionaries, handbooks and other reference sources.

• Electronic Reference Books
  

  • Xreferplus - An online collection of 150 reference books covering many disciplines. Click here for a list of titles.
  • Gale Virtual Reference Library - an online collection of reference books, including Countries and Their Cultures, Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia of Sociology, Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law, among other titles.
    
• The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Reference R031 B862N1991 ~ A good source of background information and bibliographies. Look up your topic in the index to get started.
  Also available electronically.

The library also has many subject-specific reference sources. Here are a few:

• The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America, Reference R 323.1196 E56
• Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, Reference R 364.03 E56
• Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family, Reference R 306.803 E56
• The Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism, Reference R 306.4460973 E56
• The Encyclopedia of American Immigration, Reference R 304.87303 E56
• Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations, Reference R 327.73 E56F
• Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, R 305.8 H339
• Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia, Reference R 306.703 H918
• Dictionary of American Conservatism, R 320.5203 F485D
• The Encyclopedia of Democracy, R 321.803 E56
• From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics, R 320.082

You can also search for reference sources on your topic in I-Share

Reference sources can help you get some basic information about your topic, they can give you words to use for further searching, and they can also help you think about ways of narrowing or focussing your topic.

Another set of resources that you can use to help focus or narrow your topic are these book series:

• Current Controversies
• Contemporary World Issues
• Opposing Viewpoints
• Taking Sides
  • These books discuss the pros and cons of a topic.
  • To find books in these series, simply do a search for the title of the series in I-Share.

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The Next Step

Once you have gotten some background information, you need to get more information on your topic. You will use three main kinds of resources to find this information:

• Books

• Articles from Magazines and Journals

• Websites and other Internet sources

How do I find books on my topic?

• Use I-Share Online to find books held in the Elmhurst College library as well as books owned by 65 other Illinois libraries.
  • Quick Searches A good way to start looking for books.
  • You can either look for particular items (such as a particular title), or you can do keywords searching.
  • Use the main words describing your topic. For example, to find books about phonics, type the word phonics (with or without capitals). The word phonics can be anywhere in the description of the item, like the name of the publisher.
  • To do a more focused search on, say, phonics and whole language learning, select Boolean, and type in phonics and "whole learning
    
• Browse Subject Searches
  • A more precise way of searching.
  • I-Share Online uses Library of Congress Subject Headings (or LC subject headings) to arrange and organize information.
  • Subject headings are very specific; you can guess what they might be, but you can't make them up.
  • Some examples of subject headings:
    • Tattooing
    • Titanic (Steamship)
    • Sex on television
    • Chicago Cubs (Baseball team) -- History
• Guided Keyword Searches
  • Allow you more flexibility.
  • Click the appropriate tab, and fill in the blanks as desired.
  • You can change your searching options to look for either some or all of the words you've typed in, and to look in different areas of the item's catalog record.
  • For example, select all of these and type eating disorders treatment.

Locating Articles in Library Resources

• Where can I find newspaper articles?

  • Wall Street Journal ~ full text from 1985 to present.
  • New York Times ~ full text back to 1999, with indexing available back to 1990. For older articles, try ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times, which has full text articles back to 1851. On campus access only.
  • Chicago Tribune ~ full text from 1985 to present.
  • Lexis-Nexis Academic ~ accesses a variety of news and business sources, many of which are full text.
  • Newspaper Source ~ full text from more than 100 U.S. and international newspapers. Includes sources such as USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The (London) Times, and transcripts from NPR's Morning Edition.

You can also call (630) 617-3173 or email the Reference Department to inquire about a specific title or ask a question.

Use the Find It! button to help you look through our databases and catalog for an article.

If you cannot find an article at Elmhurst, you can request it through our online Interlibrary Loan article request form. Inter library loan can take 7-10 days.

Scholarly and Popular Articles: What's the Difference?

Scholarly publications publish journals. Popular press publications publish magazines. Journal articles and magazine articles are very different from each other. Some of the differences are apparant in the following areas:

Audience: Who was the article written for?

Author: What kind of job job does the author have? What are the author's credentials?

Language: How does this article sound? What educational level is the article written for?

Content: What is being written about? Does the author write with bias?

References: Where does the author get his/her information? Is the information quoted easy to find on your own?

Look at other factors like:

• publisher
• editorial process
• advertising content of publication
• overall look of the print version (if available)

Read this to learn how to distinguish scholarly journals from other periodicals.

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• Dissing the King ~ a cautionary tale detailing how websites are not always what they seem
• The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources
  

What should I look for in a trustworthy web site?

• Evaluating Web Sites
• Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources ~ links to various on-line articles on web site evaluation
  

Where can I go for trustworthy sites that have already been evaluated?

• Librarians' Internet Index
• The Scout Report
• The Best Information on the Net
• Digital Librarian
• Internet Public Library
• BUBL ~ a selection of "Internet resources covering all academic subject areas"
  

How can I find other web sites?

• Use a search engine to find sites on your topic.
  • Hotbot
  • Google
  • Dogpile ~ a metasearch engine, which searches multiple search engines simultaneously
  • Others are listed on our Internet Tools and Sites page.

Can't I just do all of my research on the Internet (I thought everything there was free and full-text)?

Despite what some would have you believe, not everything is available for free on the Internet. Don't rely on the web as your only source of information. Choose web sites carefully. Use them to support your articles and books, not to replace them.

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Writing and Citing Information

For help with writing your outlines and bibliographies, try the Elmhurst College Writing Center online help page.

You can also try these online resources:

College Writing and Citing
Citing Electronic Resources
ONLINE! Citation Styles
Citing Sources from the Duke University Libraries

If you need any help finding articles or writing, you can also contact the Reference Desk any time the library is open:

Reference: 630-617-3173
Email: ref[at[elmhurst[dot]edu
AIM: elmhrstcollibref   |   Yahoo!Messenger: eclibraryreference   |   MSN Messenger: ref[at]elmhurst.edu

This page was created on March 23rd 2007 by Peg Cook, Assistant Reference & Instruction Librarian, A.C. Buehler Library, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst IL

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