Honors Proseminar 298

Dr. Mary Crowe, Fall 2008

Basic Library Services

Reference Librarians are here to help! Visit us, call us, email us, or chat with us!
Library hours
Interlibrary Loan

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedias useful for a general introduction to a topic, many of these cover very specialized areas:

Gale Virtual Reference Library
Full text of reference books covering many types of information.

Finding Books

Library Catalog – includes print, audio, and online books, videos, music recordings and other materials.

Keyword Searching – guide to choosing and using keywords to get the best material.

Databases and Subject Guides

For research on scholarly resources, you usually need the resources in the subject area closest to your topic. For example, if you have a literature topic, use the English sources; if you have a psychology topic, use the Psychology sources. Some typical subject areas include:

For other subject areas Electronic Databases by Subject provides a database list for each UNCG academic department or program
Choosing and using search terms
In any search, choosing the best terms is essential. For example, if you want information on “women” – some databases also use the term “females.” If you want information on women’s wages, you might try terms such as “salaries” “wages” “pay equity” or “equal pay. ”
Search Connectors in Databases (Boolean Searching) - information on combining terms.

Finding Articles

Finding Articles – many databases cover specialized topics but others are interdisciplinary and cover a wide range.
Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) –

Many articles in full text.
Articles on all subject areas
Useful for interdisciplinary research
Includes scholarly and popular resources

Academic OneFile (InfoTrac) –

Articles on all subject areas
Useful for interdisciplinary research.
Includes scholarly and popular resources

** Note : while Academic Search Premier and Academic One File are very similar in scope, each covers unique titles that aren’t included in the other source.
Newspapers – National and International

Updates and current news
Brief articles, generally don’t include graphics

Accessing Journal Articles by Journal Title

Sometimes library databases will only provide the citation and/or abstract for an article, and not the full text. If the article you want isn't available, check to see if the library has access to it by looking for this link: Check for full text availability of this item.
Clicking this link will open a new window and do a search for the journal you want in Journal Finder, Jackson Library's guide to the magazines, journals and other periodicals available to you through our system.

Journal Finder will tell you if:

the journal is available online, or
the journal is available in print in the library.

Tips for using Journal Finder:

Dates are important. Sometimes we have some issues of a journal in full text online, but not all. Make a note of the year in which your article was published, so that you can verify that it falls sometime between the "full text begins" and "full text ends" dates.
If there is nothing under "full text ends" that means we have access to that journal "up to the present."
Sometimes you will notice when using Journal Finder that the article title will be underlined in the "available online" display. Clicking this link is a quick way to get to the exact title you need, but it is not 100% reliable. If it doesn't work, click on the journal title instead and browse to the article you need.
If you can't find your article online, it might be in print.

If the article you need is not in Journal Finder, don't despair! There are other options. Ask a librarian for more help!

APA, MLA, Turabian Citation Style Information

Page Author: Updated by Mary Krautter, September 2008, based on pages created by Gerald Holmes
Education Librarian
Maintained by: Hannah Winkler