|
For
the writing you do in this course (and in general this applies to writing
expected of you in other college courses), you will want to focus your energies
on finding essays and articles published in academic publications. Other
publications that reach a more educated audience such as Time, Newsweek,
US News and World Report, Harpers, The New
Yorker, and so forth would be acceptable sources to use in your
papers. The reason is that articles and essays published in these
periodicals are pitched to a critical-minded audience and have a reputation to
uphold. That does not mean that the authors won't have a bias, but it does
mean that your information usually can be deemed reliable.
|
|
When
you decide to use the Net to locate sources to use in your writing, apply the
same consideration to selecting electronic sources as you would to choosing
print sources. One of the mistakes students often make is carelessly
choosing electronic sources because they are easy to find on the World Wide
Web. However, when searching for electronic sources, realize that in
addition to the Web, you should exhaust some other avenues first. Many of
these resources are accessible via the Internet and a Web browser, and they are
more reliable than just going to your favorite search engine and doing a query
on a topic. Consider, for example, subscription
databases.
Subscription
Databases
A
subscription database is a good place to start before conducting a broad
Internet search for Web pages. One that Fullerton
College subscribes to is EBSCOHost.
This resource will allow you to look up articles that have been published in
various periodicals such as newspapers, magazines, and academic journals.
(Nota Bena: This database is accessible from
a remote location like your home computer as long as you have the userID and
password sheet that I distributed in class. From the Fullerton College library or
campus computer labs domain, you do not need to know the userID and password.)
This database is searchable by author, title, subject, or keywords. Pick
relevant keywords to help focus your search. Your sources will always give
you critical information about the source: author, title, periodical name,
volume, issue, and page number. You will need this bibliographic
information to compile your Works Cited page, so you should find
some system to record it. The search results basically will be of two
sorts:
1)
bibliographic information (the database will indicate whether the source is part
of Fullerton College's holdings);
2)
bibliographic information and a full-text article (some
databases also will offer a PDF version of the file, which is the best version
to acquire.
If
you find a relevant source that has a full-text article, you can print it
out, e-mail it to yourself, or download it to your floppy disk. An
electronic version is the smart form to use since it is possible that you will
be citing, perhaps even quoting, from the source. The electronic format is
flexible, and you can always print it out later if you want to read from the
hard copy rather than the screen.
Another
subscription database that the Fullerton
College Library offers is the Electric Library.
This source also requires a user ID and password, which you can get from
me in class or in the library if you want to access the database from off
campus.
Online
Public Access Catalogs (OPACs)
Don't
forget that you also can remotely access Fullerton College's
online
public access catalog (OPAC). You can mostly find book and periodical titles relevant to your
topic; but as the library expands its holdings, links out to the Web can be
found for some sources. An advantage to this search tool is that you can
search for the sources you want at home, then go to campus and pick them off the
shelf, then check them out. If you happen to live closer to Orange Coast
College, Golden West College, or Cypress College, you can search those college
libraries and check out sources from that location instead. Fullerton
College is just one place to access an OPAC. You may even want to search
through the library holdings at
California
State University, Fullerton, since the campus is nearby, and it is a larger
institution with more resources.
|
