Searching

for

Literatureby Miles Hamby, Ph.D.

August 21, 2008

The Literature ReviewReview of what others have found on your topic

Benefits (from Leedy & Ormrod 2005)

• Offer new ideas, persepctives, approaches or problems similar to yours

• Identify other researchers

• Describe other methodologies and measruement tools

• Reveal sources of data

• Reveal unique interpretations and conclusions

• Support the worthiness of your own study

Searching for Literature

The toughest part ~ finding the keyword

Sources

• Ebsco

• Websites/Internet

• Library card catalogues

Ebsco - Your primary source!

Ebsco-hosted Databases• Academic Search Premier – full text > 4,500 journals  

• Business Source Premier - Most used business research database; > 2,300 journals; updated daily on EBSCOhost.  

• Regional Business News - 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires from all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States.

• ERIC (Educational Resource Information Center) - > 1,194,000 records and links to more than 100,000 full-text documents  

• Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) - > 690 periodicals, books, research reports and proceedings; back to mid-1960s.

Juried Sources• EBSCOHost • Britannica Online • Mergent Online • Congressional Quarterly Suite • Loislaw • Oxford Reference Online • Oxford English Dictionary (OED) • Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary

(Unabridged) • Faulkner's Security Management Practices

Websites

Everything on the internet is true!

It isn’t?

Internet Seach EnginesGoogle.com

Altavista.com

Askjeeves.com

Excite.com

Hotbot.com

Infoseek.com

How to use literature

Anything can be used as a reference – the crtiical thing is how

it’s used!

• to validate or refute

• to illustrate

• to defend

• to compare and contrast

To validate or refute -

Scholarly works!

What makes a work ‘scholarly’?

• Source of publication – i.e., juried

• Author’s name & credentials

• List of references; in-text citations• Format – eg, classic 5 chapters

To validate or refute -

Other Sources

• Government and Public Service websites – certain pages, if identified as valid information

• Private website – certain pages if identified as valid information

All other uses -

• News articles – usually anonymous

• Entertainment media – eg, u-tube, movies, music

• Fiction – novels, stories

• Non-juried sources - eg, Wikipedia

• Blogs & Personal Websites

• Organizational Websites

Whatever you use -

Document it!

Searching

for

Literature