UN 1001: Perspectives on Inquiry, Library Resources

The American Road Trip

Instructor: Larry Lankton; email, ldlankto@mtu.edu

Librarian: Joan Goodbody; email: goodbody@mtu.edu; 487-2698

 

MTU Library Catalog: www.lib.mtu.edu

Use the catalog to find items that the library owns: Searchable by author, title, subject or keywords. Also after using an index to find a paper/article that you want, youll need to use this catalog to determine whether we have the journal that the article appeared in. Articles from journals we do not have or books we do not have can be ordered through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). Many of the databases now have a direct ILL link.

 

Reference Resources:

The reference collection is a good place to begin exploring an unfamiliar subject. The encyclopedias and dictionaries found here can give you definitions of terms and background information on your subject. Along with help identifying specific issues within your broad subject area to explore in more detail.

American decades: E 169.12.A419 1995: This is a series that will give good basic information about each decade and gives a chronological listing of events in different categories for each decade.

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. Q 121 .M3 REF

Science and the Future: Q 9 .B78 REF

The complete encyclopedia of motorcars, 1885-1968: TL 15.G39 REF

The Automobile industry, 1920-1980: HD 9710.U52 A79REF

Evaluating Information Sources the following sites can help evaluate different types pf resources. They are produced by other institutions.

Identifying Scientific Journals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journal

Identifying Research Articles and Refereed Journals: http://gateway.library.uiuc.edu/lsx/tutorial/section3.html

Evaluating Web Sites: <http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html>

Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Sources: http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/LibraryGuides/primsrcs.shtml

 

E-Resources access to electronic indexes/abstracts, online books, e-journals and selected websites. From the E-Resource menu select listings by alphabet, topic or collection (e.g. FirstSearch, InfoTrac, Lexis-Nexis). E-Resources are also searchable by name or keyword(s.) Use the index databases to locate journal articles, newspaper articles, or reviews on your topic. Some indexes or collections of indexes especially useful for research in this course include:

 

FirstSearch: This database provides access to over 60 databases. They include:

Worldcat, a comprehensive database for all types of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. This does NOT index periodicals at the article level;

Wilson Select Plus, A full text database comprised of articles represented by selected citations from Readers' Guide Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, General Science Abstracts, Education Abstracts, and Wilson Business Abstracts, Alternate Press Abstracts, Applied Science and Technology Abstracts, etc..

AHSearch (Arts & Humanities): This online equivalent of ISI's Arts & Humanities Citation Index provides complete indexing for more than 1,150 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals. It also includes relevant items from over 7,000 of the world's leading science and social sciences journals.

LexisNexis:

Academic provides full-text documents from over 5,600 news, business, legal, medical, and reference publications with a variety of flexible search options. 

Congressional provides a comprehensive online resource from Congressional hearings, public issues, legislation, history, and legal research.

Infotrac: A comprehensive multi-index database including:

Expanded Academic ASAP: Gives access to arts and the humanities to social sciences, science and technology scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers - many with full text and images. Can limit to refereed articles only.

General Reference Center Gold: A general interest database that integrates a variety of sources in one easy-to-use interface. Use General Reference Center Gold to find articles from newspapers,.

JSTOR: is a searchable database containing scanned images of back issues of over 100 scholarly journals in a variety of academic disciplines. Titles currently available are from the fields of: African-American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology and Statistics

 

E-books:

There are a variety of databases with full-text books available through the libraries main page. They include:

The Internet Public Library: The IPL Books Collection (formerly known as Online Texts) contains over 20,000 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Decimal Classification.

netLibrary: This database offers a comprehensive approach to eBooks that integrates the missions and methods of libraries and librarians.

Websites:

Firstgov.gov: www.firstgov.gov. This is the official government site that searches over

87 million sites. Can search for just federal, federal and a specific state, federal and all states, all states, or a specific state. Advanced search gives the most flexibility.

American Memory: http://www.loc.gov/. This is the main page of the Library of Congress. Click on American Memory to get to the search page. American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

 

Interlibrary Loan access to items from other libraries.

Request items using an ILL form available at the Circulation desk or online (Under Library Services menu, select Interlibrary Loans.) Many index databases also allow ILL requests through their sites.

Note The ILL process can take time (longer than 10 days in some cases.) Plan your research time accordingly.

 

 Government resources:

Remember that there are a multitude of Government Documents that deal with the topics that you are working with so be sure to utilize the paper and web sources for these

 

For Assistance

For individual assistance or instruction from a librarian, visit or phone the Reference/Information Desk (487-2507), e-mail instrlib@mtu.edu, or complete an Individual Instruction Request form found under Reference & Instruction on the Librarys web page at www.lib.mtu.edu.

 

Suggested resources:

 

19^th Century Topics:

History related. Keyword search in books [many government documents about protecting some of these and the history so that they can be saved; Jstor; General academic gold; firstgov.gov; American Memory; Worldcat to order books; Wilson select for full text; Applied Science and technology [ASTA]..

Art related: Firstsearch, Art abstracts; JSTORr;Arts and Humanities abstracts;

Social/Culture issues: JSTOR; General Academic; American Memory; Worldcat; Social

Notes: National Pike is also called National Road;

 

20^th Century Topics:

Use the same above: probably need to do research early so can order through interlibrary loan.

Also check go to e-resource, type in transportation, then select databases and you would get three databases, one full test, one with some full text, all with some information on some of the modern topics.

Also numerous reference books in reference section of library about specific cars.