General/Current Topics Resources:
Full-Text Databases |
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CQ Researcher - historically a paper title now gone electronic; concatenates news and essays and other materials about current issues into one place; a great place to begin studying any given issue ProQuest Research Library - Four major newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BarronÍs) and over 1,800 magazines and journals in all subject areas are indexed in this combined database. Full text / full image is approximately 50%. You can restrict results to scholarly journals (peer-reviewed publications) by checking the appropriate box. Academic Search Complete - Indexes nearly 3,200 magazines and journals in covering areas of academic study including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies. Full text / full image is approximately 60%. Date coverage is highly various by journal title, in some cases going back to 1984 but usually no more than 1993-present. You can restrict results to scholarly (peer reviewed) journals by clicking the appropriate box. LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe News Search - Academic Universe is the most current and most complete source for full text news stories. It is an amalgam of dozens of databases; even the News section incorporates eleven databases, most of which have subfiles. If you click the tab for Guided News Search, you will be able to select from General News, Today's News, U.S. News, World News, News Wires, News Transcripts (from radio and television broadcasts), Arts & Sports News, Non-English Language News, Business News, Legal News, and University News. Depending on which you choose, there may be subfiles; for example, if you select General News, you will be able to search in Major Papers, Magazines & Journals, Newsletters, Abstracts, Policy Papers, Time Incorporated Publications, or Tribune Newspapers (but not all of them at once). The only way to make a broad search across these databases and subfiles is to use the Quick News Search tab, but this provides a considerably weaker search engine with fewer options. In either case, you must select a date range. The default is previous six months, but you can also choose today, previous week, previous month, previous year, or previous two years. In Guided News Search, you can also select previous five years, previous ten years, or all available dates. The databases are actually updated throughout the day, so selecting Today will retrieve breaking stories. There are also sections for Business, Legal, Medical, and Reference databases, as noted on the search screen. Newspaper Archive the largest historical newspaper database online, contains tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present. Every newspaper in the archive is fully searchable by keyword and date, making it easy for you to quickly explore historical content.
Newspaper Source -Provides selected full text for nearly 30 national (U.S.) and international newspapers. The database also contains full text television & radio news transcripts, and selected full text for more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers. This database is updated daily. World News Digest - The electronic version of the Facts On File reference series. Provides full text for brief news items covering U.S. and world news going back to 1940. You can search for items by keyword or select from the various menus of features, which include a two week archive of Reuters news, maps, photos and graphics, top stories of each year from 1940 to present, special features of historic events, key issues, key people, obituaries, editorials, historic documents, country profiles, and "What happened on that date?" where you can input a date and get the news stories from that date. The database is divided into two files with tabs at the top of the screen. The default is 1980-present, but you can click the second tab and search in 1940-1979. JSTOR - Full-image database of articles in major academic journals, with an important difference: backfiles may go back to 1900 or earlier, but the current articles are always excluded, usually for three to five years. A subject category must be chosen and the search button at the bottom of the form clicked to perform a search. The subject categories include African American Studies, African Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, General Science, Geography, History, History of Science, Language & Literature, Latin American Studies, Mathematics, Middle East Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Slavic Studies, Sociology, and Statistics. The list of journals in each subject is short but highly selective. Printing from JSTOR can be complicated. If you try to print when the article text is onscreen, it will print only one page at a time. It is better to return to the citation and click the Print option, and then follow the instructions. This will lead to a PDF window which is printable on all library computers. Project MUSE - A selective full text database of nearly 200 journal titles from some 30 scholarly publishers. Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. Dates of coverage are variable - few journals go back farther than 1995. Project MUSE is often complementary with JSTOR (above) in that it provides text and image of current articles in journals for which JSTOR has the backfiles. MasterFILE Premier - Indexes over 2,800 general reference, business, consumer health, general science, and multi-cultural periodicals. Full text is approximately 65%. Date coverage is highly various by periodical title, in some cases going back to 1984 but usually no more than 1993-present. American Periodicals Series, 1740-1900 - Full text articles from over 1,100 periodicals which first began publication between 1740 and 1900, including general and special interest magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals. You can search by topic keyword or by the names of the periodicals. Kluwer Online - Full text articles from over 750 Kluwer journals in a wide variety of subject areas. Wiley InterScience - Full text articles from over 500 Wiley journals in a wide variety of subject areas. There is some concentration in the sciences and applied sciences, but also in business, education, law, and psychology, among other subject areas. Dekker Journals - Full text articles from about 100 journals published by Marcel Dekker in a wide variety of subject areas. There is some concentration in the applied sciences, but not exclusively. NEWSPAPER INDEXES InfoTrac Custom Newspapers - Full text articles from the Austin American Statesman (1996-present ), Dallas Morning News (1996-present), Financial Times (1996-present), Houston Chronicle (1996- ), Knight Ridder (1996-1999), N.Y. Times (12 Month rolling file), The Times (London) (1997-present), Washington Post (1/96-present). ProQuest Newspapers - Indexes articles in the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Full text and date of coverage are highly various depending on the newspaper. |
Citation / Abstract Databases |
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FirstSearch 42 databases index magazines, journals, and reference sources in 15 subject categories: Arts & Humanities, Business & Economics, Conferences & Proceedings, Consumer Affairs & People, Education, Engineering & Technology, General, General Science, Life Sciences, Medical/Health - Consumer, Medical/Health - Professional, News & Current Events, Public Affairs & Law, Quick Reference, and Social Sciences. The library is charged for each search performed in any FirstSearch database (with exceptions indicated below), and the search engine is rather limited. ArticleFirst(Link goes to main list, please select from there) - Indexes over 12,000 magazines and journals in all subject areas. Date coverage is 1990-present. Uses the FirstSearch search engine, but the library is not charged for the individual searches. PapersFirst - Another FirstSearch database for which the library is not charged for individual searches. Indexes conference papers on all subjects received by The British Library Document Supply Center. ProceedingsFirst - Another FirstSearch database closely related to PapersFirst (again, the library is not charged for individual searches). Provides citations for conferences, symposia, etc. received by the British Library, including lists of papers presented. Electronic Collections Online (ECO) - Another FirstSearch database for which the library is not charged for individual searches. Indexes over 3,000 magazines and journals in all subject areas. Date coverage is 1995-present. Full-text for some of these journals may be added at a later date. |
Print Resources |
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The Library of Congress classification for general topics is A. General English-language encyclopedias, for example, are under AE 5. Killam Library has recent editions of Academic American Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, and Encyclopaedia Britannica under AE 5 in the Reference Collection on the first floor. If youÍre looking for quick research information on a variety of current and popular topics (like abortion, gun control, environmental protection, etc.), you might start with the CQ Researcher, Index Area AP 2 .E5 on an index table in the reference area. CQ Researcher consists of briefs on a variety of popular and controversial topics, including the basic facts and recent developments in the issue and an outline of the views and arguments on all sides. Another way to get started in finding a popular or current topic to research would be to browse the newspapers and magazines in the Periodicals Room on the first floor of the library. CD-ROM SOURCES The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are searchable in full-text, 1994-present, on the four CD-ROM ProQuest machines in the reference area of Killam Library. |
Web Resources |
| There are more than a dozen major web search engines, and most of them have outlines of general, popular, and current topic sites as well as keyword searching capability. Click here for a guide to all the major web search engines.
Internet Public Library - Established by the University of Michigan School of Information as a premier and model site for the provision of library services featuring online sources to the Internet community. The Reference Center features links to reference and subject pages in arts and humanities, business and economics, computers and the Internet, education, entertainment and leisure, health and medical sciences, law government and political science, sciences and technology, social sciences, and associations; a list of original IPL reference sources such as an online literary criticism collection, a comprehensive site on American presidents, and a page with "hello"translated into thirty languages plus links to language and culture pages; and an email reference service. There are also changing and permanent exhibits, primarily of photographs (two current exhibits are on lighthouses and on Harlem from 1900-1940), over 3,000 electronic magazines and journals, hundreds of online newspapers from all over the world, and over 17,000 electronic books. CNN Online - A premiere online source for current and recent news stories. ItÍs a very popular site, so expect long load times at peak hours. NPR Online - Another extensive and highly-respected source for current and recent news stories. It includes more feature and human-interest stories than CNN, and is also somewhat less busy. AlertNet - Another site for news stories, which concentrates somewhat on disaster stories and disaster relief. Because it's Reuters, there is more emphasis on world news than U.S. news. News Voyager - Links to the homepages of more than 2,000 newspapers nationwide, plus some Canadian and international papers. Many of the homepages include links to local information sources for the city or ainks to local information sources for the city or area served by the newspaper, as well as current articles in full text. More web sites with links to newspaper homepages can be found on the How-Do-I-Find-a Newspaper Article page. |
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