Locating Sources

Danielle Carlock480 425 6765d.carlock@sccmail.maricopa.edu

LOCATING SOURCES FOR YOUR SPEECH Method depends on type of source

seeking (book, article, website, etc)

Today we are going to focus on finding magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles

There are really two things to consider: where and how….

WHERE….

Not effective to use Google for article searches. Why?

Where instead?

LIBRARY DATABASES

Specialized search engines Available to students via library

website Contain access to articles No charge

SUGGESTED DATABASES

Academic Search Premier Academic One File CQ Researcher Opposing Viewpoints Possibly a subject specific database

related to your topic

ALL AVAILABLE THRU THE LIBRARY WEBSITE

What is a keyword search?

A type of search that looks for matching documents that contain the words specified by the user.

By doing this you hope to get back results about your topic

The database cannot think for you/anticipate what you want

Example: you want articles about global warming. You type in global warming. You won’t get articles that you use the term climate change instead.

HOW TO SEARCH FOR ARTICLES

Going to take you through a step by step process to effectively and efficiently find articles

The “Search Strategy” worksheet will be used

STEP 1: WRITE YOUR GOAL STATEMENT

See pg 289-290 in text

Goal statement example: To combat the extreme weather created by global warming, the U.S. federal government must implement stronger industrial regulations.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY THE KEY WORDS IN YOUR GOAL STATEMENT

The key words in your goal statement are usually verbs and nouns.

Keyword 1:

Keyword 2:

STEP 3: IDENTIFY SYNONYMS FOR EACH OF YOUR KEY WORDS

The English language is very rich. There are many words to describe the same concept.

Synonyms for keyword 1:

Synonyms for keyword 2:

STEP 4: CREATE A SEARCH STRING

Now that you have keywords and synonyms, we will combine them in such as way that the database understands what you want it to do with them.

In other words we are going to talk to the database using the language and commands in understands

AND

•A command you give to the database•It is put between the key words in the search•Ex: climate change AND extreme weather•It tells the database to find articles which include BOTH of these terms

OR

Another command you give to the database

It is put between groups of synonyms

EX: extreme weather OR megastorms

It tells the database to look for articles in which either of the words appear

PRACTICE

Put together a search string for the topic

FULL SEARCH STRING

(“global warming” OR “climate change”) AND (“extreme weather” OR megastorms)

STEP 5: CHOOSE AN APPROPIATE DATABASE

Choose one or two databases appropriate to our topic, climate change.

Step 6: USE LIMITS AS APPROPRIATE

Limits are ways you can tell the database to reduce the number of results based on certain criteria: Full text Language Year range Publication type

Step 7: CONDUCT THE SEARCH

Type your search string into the search box and apply your limits

Step 8: RECORD CITATIONS

Find articles that appear promising. Print out citations: author(s), article title, name of

magazine, journal, or newpaper, year, volume, issue, page numbers.

Use database features to email articles to yourself, save them or print them.

HANDS ON PRACTICE

In groups, use the worksheet to conduct a search on a speech topic.

I will come around and assign which database to use.

Take 20 minutes to do this. At end of time, a volunteer group(s) will show us what they did/found.