Ohlone College Library Orientation
- Speech 103
Finding Journal Articles on Interpersonal Communication
Topics
Step One: Get a little context and build a vocabulary
for your specific topic
Even if you are ultimately going to base your research
on journal articles, the reference section is often the best place
to start your research. Brief, background articles in a reference source can
help you understand important terms and concepts and narrow and define the
scope of your research.
Encyclopedia
of Psychology
Location: Reference BF 31 .E52 2000 (8 volumes)
Articles are signed and include extensive bibliographies. Edited by Alan Kazdin,
this encyclopedia is a highly regarded work of scholarship and is an excellent
source of background information on a wide variety of topics including nonverbal
communication, group dynamics, etc.
Encyclopedia
of Human Emotions
Location: Reference BF 531 .E65 1999 (2 volumes)
Includes brief articles on a range of topics including
communication. Many articles have useful bibliographies, which can help you identify
important writers and works of research on your topic.
The
Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Location: Online
The full text of this 2001 edition is available online.
Step Two: Use the concepts and terminology you found in step one to determine
search terms and to help you understand scholarly journal articles.
To find articles in journals use a periodical database.
Your topic will determine which are the best databases to use for your search,
and you may want to read some less scholarly articles first to get some familiarity
with your topic. For best results in finding scholarly journal articles, use
EbscoHost's Academic Search Elite or JSTOR.
A. Overview sources:
CQ
Researcher
- What is it?
- Database of good in-depth but introductory articles about topical issues.
- Search directly by keyword, e.g.: cyber communication
SIRS
- Good, selective coverage on Social Issues.
LexisNexis
- Quickly search across a large number of news sources
- Useful for getting "readable" reporting on scientific studies
Ethnic
NewsWatch
- Good for perspectives from ethnic, minority and native presses.
- Select Ethnic NewsWatch database to avoid New York Times, other mainstream
publications.
B. Scholarly Sources:
Ebscohost
Academic Search Elite
- What is it?
- Database containing both full-text and citation/abstract only articles
- Scholarly, peer-reviewed, academic journal articles AND popular magazine
articles
- Complex database, supports advanced features. Worth searching separately!
- Can narrow down results by suggested subject headings (left-margin)
- Can limit search results to just full-text, to peer-reviewed.
JSTOR
- What is it?
- New database with full-text of core scholarly journal articles in Arts,
Sciences, Social Sciences...
- "Archive" collection - usually doesn't include the most current
(1-5 years) of issues
- For now, JSTOR and Central Search aren't working well together! Getting
results for content we don't have access rights to.
- Search separately. Limit to full-text. Maybe also limit to type "Article"
to avoid book reviews.
C. All in one!
Central
Search
- New Tool! We are still fine-tuning; you can help us with
feedback.
- Find Books, Journal Articles, Web sites, all with a single search
across multiple databases.
- Nice Features: "One-Stop Shopping," Discover
new resources, Full-text filter, subject clustering.
- Discovery Tool: Best to use as a first step, to identify
good databases and quickly see scope of results.
- By default, search is looking for words in the title (you
can change this).
- More detailed and focused searching will be available from individual
database interfaces. See examples below.
- Access selected resources from Library
home page ("Quick Search" is limited to our online catalog,
HANS, and our periodical databases)
- Access all resources and fine-tune search from main Central
Search interface.
