LIBRARY RESEARCH BASICS

Step One - Plan your paper: Research Paper Navigator
Step Two - Set up RefWorks to organize and format your citations: more info
Step Three - Research

Finding Books in the Library Catalog

On the Tisch Library homepage select Library Catalog.

How do I do a good search?

Try a keyword search, using the connectors AND, OR, or NOT to join more than one topic/keyword....

Example:
(muslim OR islam*) AND (wom?n OR female* OR femin*)

....Now, once you have found at least ONE GOOD RESULT, look at the Subject Headings (also sometimes called Descriptors) in the record, and see what terms that database uses to describe your topic (each database will use its own subject headings, different from other databases!). Now do the search again, using the relevant terms from the Subject Headings. This will focus your search on relevant results, so you won't have to skim through lots of records that won't be helpful in your research.

Note: In the Library Catalog two asterisks ** are needed for truncation, whereas in many databases only one asterisk * is needed--but ALWAYS CHECK THE HELP SCREEN IN EVERY DATABASE to learn how to do the best (and fastest) searches!

Library Databases

To search for articles using the library databases, go to the Tisch Library Website and select Databases and Articles under Searching. Type in the name of the database in the search box or use the A-Z list to locate it.

The following collections are possible places to find articles about your topic.

• Academic OneFile - Includes over 8,000 peer-reviewed journals, the majority in full-text. Extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects. Full text articles available in both PDF and HTML.

• Sociological Abstracts
  Use to find citations to articles in the field of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Articles often have abstracts and sometimes have links to full-text.

• International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
  The IBSS has more than two million references to articles and books going back to 1951 in the social sciences. It is produced by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

• Film and Television Literature Index
  Film & Television Literature Index is a bibliographic database that provides indexing and abstracts for more than 300 publications, and selected coverage of 300 more.

• Communications Studies
  Covers the fields of journalism, political communications, media studies and literacy studies in 16 Sage journals with over 5,000 articles. Some journals go back to 1982.

• PsycINFO
  PsycInfo indexes the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, covering dissertations and over 1,300 journals in more than 30 languages as well as book chapters and books in English. Over 50,000 references are added annually.

Materials at Other Libraries

Books

• If you want to search for books on your topic beyond what's available at the Tufts University Libraries use WorldCat. You can access this database on the Databases & Articles page.
• If you want to borrow a book that is not available at Tufts University Libraries, follow these steps:

1. Search the Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog by clicking on its link along the top menu of the Library Catalog. This catalog contains the book holdings at most of the BLC libraries. Users can directly request books through the catalog and pick up the books at Tisch Library.
2. If the book is not available through the BLC Virtual Catalog, Submit an online request through the document delivery service - ILLIAD. Users are notified when the material arrives at Tisch. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.

Articles

• Articles not available in full-text through our libraries' databases and print collections can be requested through ILLiad. You can sign up for an ILLiad account by clicking on First Time Users at the ILLiad home page.
• You can also use ILLiad directly within the databases.

Working with the Information You Find

The database only gives me a citation, or just an abstract. How do I find the full text?

• Use , OR (if it doesn't seem to be working):
• look up the journal title (not the article title) by using the JOURNAL TITLE search option in the library catalog to find out if we own it electronically or in print. Be sure to check the range of dates we own before running to the shelves!

Is a journal I've found scholarly/peer-reviewed/refereed?

• Look it up in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. Check the "document type" field in the record for that journal.

Evaluating Web Sites

• Guidelines for evaluating a website's authority/bias
• Use other Search Engines dedicated to more scholarly web sources.

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