Encyclopedias & Reference Materials
The following resources (and more) can be found by clicking on "Reference E-Resources" from the Reed Library home page.
A good general encyclopedia for quick overview information on a topic. Simple keyword searches are all you need.
A collection of reference books that includes dictionaries (including many bilingual), maps, and the "Oxford Companion to Literature" series.
Clicking on the "Wilson Biographies" also gives you access to Book Review Digest Plus. They both index numerous Wilson publications. Biographies tends to have more full-text than Book Review Digest.
Books are a good place to start to get an overview of a topic. They can also contain more specific material—for instance, there are a lot of collections of critical essays about a particular author or work. Keep in mind that some books you need might have to be ordered from another library, which takes a few days (see Prospector, below).
If you can't find what you need in the Reed Library Catalog, your next stop should be Prospector. It's a giant catalog of 23 libraries from all over the state. Materials arrive in 3-4 days or less, can be kept for three weeks, and renewed once. And it's FREE.
If you can't find what you're looking for after searching both the Reed Library Catalog AND Prospector, try WorldCat. It's a catalog of library holdings from thousands of libraries, and has pretty much anything you could ever want. There are two ways to search WorldCat. Try WorldCat through Google for a simple search interface. If you have a more complex search, go to the traditional WorldCat interface.
If you want to find out if Reed Library subscribes to a journal, there are two ways to go about it. This is because some are available electronically, but others are still only available in print. The instructions below are for finding out if we have access to a particular journal. If you want to search journal databases for articles on a topic, go to Individual Articles.
To see if we have online access to a journal, go to E-Journal Finder. You can look journals up by title, or browse by subject area. Your results will show which databases index that journal. Be sure to read the descriptions— different databases have different dates of coverage. Clicking on any of those links will take you to the electronic version of the journal, which you can then browse by issue.
If your journal doesn't appear in the E-Journal finder, do a periodical search in the library catalog for journals that we have in print. You will have to come to the library to read these journals.
To find individual articles, you have to search article databases (confusingly, these are also known as journal databases, periodical databases, or article indexes).
Lexis-Nexis contains a wealth of information for communications research, including:
The default search screen lets you choose what kind of publication to search within. Click on the "i" next to each category to see which publications are included.
NOTE: the default is set to search within the last two years, so if you're looking for a historical perspective, be sure to change that.
The MLA Bibliography is one of the most important resources in the field of English, so you should definitely become familiar with it. It is not just literature, but also contains a lot of content related to communications and media studies. Most of the content in MLA is NOT full text, so you will need to locate articles in print, in microform, or elsewhere online. It is much better to make the extra effort to find the articles you need than it is to keep searching and searching until you find articles in full text. Ask a librarian if you need help.
Hint: MLA Bibliography is a broad database, so you need to be specific in your searching. Use Boolean operators.
It can be helpful to go into the Thesaurus to see what vocabulary the database is using. Although the subject terms are links, don't click on them to add to your search. They can mess you up. Just cut and paste, or remember the term and type it into your search manually.
These databases contain useful and detailed background information on authors, including some journalists. Before diving in, see the notes on Gale resources in Reference Materials, above).
Search for an author's name or the title of a work first. If you get too many results, you can add a term to the full-text field. You will find citations to critical articles and essays about your author—if the title is hyperlinked, you can go right to the article. If it's not linked, follow the instructions in Journals above to locate the journal.
J-STOR is a broad, multidisciplinary journal archive, so you need to be very specific when searching. Because the J-STOR search interface always searches the full text of articles, you are likely to get results that are not very relevant. To cut down on this, go to the Advanced Search screen and limit your search to journals in certain categories. For example, if you're looking for articles on how women are portrayed in the media, you could limit your search to journals in Feminist and Women's Studies.
Hint: Use the print button on the J-STOR page, not the print function of your browser. If you need help, ask a librarian.
NOTE: J-STOR is not a typical database, it's a journal archives. Its contents are not up-to-the minute current. They have a different deal with every publisher for when journals can be made accessible, allowing for a period of time for them to be sold first, so the publisher can make their money. This "moving wall" is typically 3-5 years back.
The trick to using web resources is being a critical consumer of the information. The following list points to both scholarly and popular resources— if your professor requires scholarly resources, you have to critically evaluate the site yourself. For more about evaluating web sites, see this handout.
There are a ton of great sites for communications research. The following list isn't meant to be inclusive, it's just a few reliable sites to get you started. If you come across anything that you think should be included, contact Chris Hartman.
The granddaddy of online humanities resources. Links to an astonishing variety of reference resources, glossaries, scholarship, organizations, educational programs, journals, magazines, and web sites in all areas of humanities. You could get lost for an eternity in their Media Studies section.
Tons of links to sites in advertising, communication studies, journalism, and radio/tv/film. Some resources are limited to their students, so choose sites that do not have the UT logo next to them.
The University of Iowa's Communication Studies Department has collected tons of links to great web sites, in categories from political advertising to visual representations of 9/11.
Web sites vetted by librarians— links to sites on alternative media, press privilege, blogs and podcasts, digital media, and more.
"An award-winning portal or 'meta-index' to internet-based resources useful in the academic study of media and communication." The main focus is on media from the UK.
Academic papers from the communications and media folks at MIT.
List of journals about computer-mediated communications. Some of the links lead to free, full-text access. If they don't, go to Finding Journals to figure out how to access the journal's content.
CJR is a "deliberative mix of reporting, analysis, criticism, and commentary" on journalism, from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. You can search the archives of the journal going back 16 years.
A large bibliographic database of feminist theory, feminist literary criticism, and gender studies, with an emphasis on British and American literature. This is a great resource that includes a lot of stuff you won't find in more traditional resources. The "bibliographic" part means that there is not full text here— these are primarily books that you will have to find in the library or order through ILL.
A wealth of resources for students of visual media, including bibliographies of film literature. Check out their Strategies for Finding Film Reviews and Critical Analysis.
Search for movie reviews going back 20 years (limited content going back to 1929).
Movie reviews from the University of Maryland's Women's Studies Database
Loaded with information on actors, directors, movies, television shows, etc.
The biggest online database of movie reviews, including everything from the New York Times to independent publications and blogs. Just type in the title of a movie and get a comprehensive list of reviews written about it.
An extensive list of film journals and other resources from Screensite.
Moving images: access to tens of thousands of movies, public television programming, commercial films, and news broadcasts. Includes the famous Prelinger Archives, a collection of "ephemeral" films: advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur movies.
Audio: access to news programming, Grateful Dead concerts, old time radio, poetry readings, and more.
Just what it sounds like. Hundreds of scripts, including some rejected drafts.
"Images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955."
Finding sources is only one part of the research process— the other is evaluating what you find. At its most basic, this involves thinking about:
This process isn't always as easy as it sounds, especially for information you find on the Internet. For more information about what to look for with particular types of sources, see this handout.
The most common citation style in the field of English Literature is MLA. For a basic overview, see the Reed Library Citation Style Guide. For more information, or to learn how to cite more unusual formats, refer to Joseph Gibaldi's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Call# LB2369 .G53 2003.
For help with research, developing a search strategy, or working with citations, contact the English Department liaison librarian:
Chris Hartman
142 Reed Library
970-247-7662
Hartman_C@fortlewis.edu
