JCCC ONLINE LIBRARY RESEARCH

JCCC ONLINE LIBRARY RESEARCH

Your Research Mission The Oral History essay needs to begin with three or four paragraphs that use at least 5 outside sources that are documented using the MLA style. We are going to do some research on the JCCC databases just for practice and to help you find more information on your topic. You ll want to try to find at least 1 article from the JCCC databases associated with your topic that you can use in your essay. When you find an article that may help you with your essay, download it. At the bottom of an article from a database you will find the MLA style citation that you can copy into your notes.

GOING TO THE JCCC LIBRARY

Step 1: JCCC Homepage Go to the homepage for JCCC: www.jccc.edu Click on the words Library and Technology

Click on Findarticles -- databases Step 2: JCCC Databases

The JCCC Databases The databases are accessible in our library because the JCCC Library subscribes to them. They are pass-word protected. The information in them is not available on the internet and cannot be located by typical search engines. The library subscribes to many kinds of databases. Some of the databases are very general and catalog articles on general interest topics that are written by journalists. For instance, you might go to the database Academic Onefile and find material of interest to the general public, such as film reviews, sports reports, articles on celebrities, and information on current events in the news. Other databases are catalogues of articles written by scholars.

Step 3: Logging into the Database System At some point in this process, the JCCC library website will ask you for your Username and PIN. The library username and PIN numbers are the same ones that you use when logging on to our course website. Your JCCC Username and Password

Step 4: Selecting Specific Search Since two members of the class asked about doing essays on the Cultural Revolution in China, we ll use that as an example for a search. We are going to do a search for scholarly articles on the Cultural Revolution. This means we are looking for articles that are more complex than news reports.

What is a scholarly article? Articles in research journals are written by experts in their field. This situations is different from that of magazines and newspapers. Journalists are assigned stories to write about, or journalists pursue stories they are interested in, such as sports. But a scholar writes about what the scholar researches, usually in a very limited field. The research tends to be both technical and thorough. Also in a research journal, the articles are reviewed by editors who are also experts in the field before the articles are published. In fact, a research article submitted for publication will be sent to other experts to read for currency and accuracy. In this way, an article is said to be peer-reviewed before it is published. Scholarly journals tend to have a very narrow focus. The only subscribers to these publications tend to be university libraries and experts in the field. The only readers tend to be scholars in the field. For instance, there are scholarly publications about genetics. The scholars who publish in these journals are themselves geneticists (not journalists). The folks who read these publications are other geneticists who want to read research in order to keep up in their field. Generally, scholarly articles have limited entertainment value. For instance, you won t be reading about the recent engagement of a celebrity geneticist in a journal devoted to the latest research in genetics. You will be reading science and not gossip : - )

WORKING IN THE DATABASES

Step 5: Choosing a Database After clicking on Find articles: databases, you will arrive at this page. Click on Browse Databases

Accessing Online Encyclopedias Click on the word Subjects and then on Encyclopedias. Next choose Encyclopedia Britannica.

Step 6: Entering Search Terms We need to type in search terms and then hit enter. The terms you enter will determine the result. Let s start with 3 search terms and see where that takes us. First of all, we will need to limit our search to China. Next, we want an article on a very specific event. All the words together having to do with the name of that event need to be in quotation marks in order to unify the topic of the search. So our search will be: china cultural revolution

After we enter our search terms, we will be taken to a link about this topic. We can click on the link and find a long encyclopedia article about the Cultural Revolution.

Step 7: Using JSTOR The JSTOR database gives links to scholarly articles on a multitude of topics from many journals. We need to go back to the database page. Click on Alphabetical and then click on J.

Click on the word JSTOR

On the JSTOR search screen, enter our search terms again.

Many articles will be listed as the result of your search. You can ask the search engine for the list of articles to be sorted from newest to oldest or oldest to newest. You will notice that some of the articles have the words Download PDF beneath the title. This means that you can download the article to your laptop and read it there.

Step 8: Accessing Academic Onefile Return to the database page. Click on Browse Databases and then select Alphabetical and A. Then select Academic Onefile.

The Academic Onefile Database can be difficult to use because it returns so many articles, both from the popular press and from scholarly journals. So I asked one of JCCC s research librarians to do a search for us that somewhat narrowed the topic. Here is the link to his search: http://jccc.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?s.cmd=addfacetvaluefilters% 28ContentType,Journal+Article%29&s.fvf[]=SubjectTerms,china,f&s.fvf[]=IsFull Text,true,f&s.light=t&s.q=%22Cultural+Revolution%22

Step 10: Experimentation Once you have run the search on the Cultural Revolution, you might want to experiment with other search terms and also look at some of the advanced search options that help you limit your search.