Research
Resources > Subject Guides
Subject Guide for Journalism and Mass Communication
Class: Journalism 4301
Instructor: Mike McDevitt
Date: September 12, 2006
PowerPoint Presentation from Library Seminar
Popular vs. Scholarly Sources |
Popular Sources |
Scholarly Sources |
• Written by journalists
• Can include glossy photos/paper
• Usually includes advertisements
• Intended for a general audience |
• Written by scholars (credentials are listed)
• Includes works cited (supporting research)
• Journal is peer-reviewed (editorial board)
• Intended for an academic audience |
Before beginning your search of library resources, you want to first identify the main concepts of your research question.
Question: What is the current research being done on ethics and the media?
Concepts: Ethics, Media
Once you've identified the concepts, think of other terms that describe the same concept. You can also think of broader and narrower terms that describe the concepts.
Ethics |
Media |
• Ethics
• Codes
• Morals
• Principles |
• Media
• News
• Press
• Journalism
• Reporting |
You can use a thesaurus to help you find other terms for your topic. It is important to think about the level of the material you are looking for – popular and scholarly sources may use different language to describe the same concept.
Once you have your terms that you want to use, you need to construct your search. You can combine your terms using operators and punctuation (like in the examples below):
Operators : AND, OR, NOT
Example 1: ethics AND media (must find both terms)
Example 2: ethics OR media (must find one of the terms)
Example 3: ethics NOT media (must find first term and NOT second term)
Punctuation :
Phrases: “television news” (must find that phrase in that order)
Synonyms: (media OR press OR news) AND ethics
Wildcards: journalis* will find journalism, journalist, journalists, etc.
Find Articles & More - http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/findarticles/
The library's article databases are listed alphabetically or by subject.
(Subject examples: Journalism, News & Newspapers, Communication etc.)
E-Journal Finder - http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/ejournalfinder.htm
Search the E-Journal Finder for databases that provide a specific journal's or newspaper's content.
Subject Guides - http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/subjectguides/
Librarians have compiled subject guides of the important resources (print, Internet and database) for many disciplines, including Journalism and Mass Communication.
Chinook - http://libraries.colorado.edu/
Chinook is the library catalog for materials at CU – find journal articles by doing a “Periodical Title” search for the journal name (NOT the article name).
Recommended Academic Resources |
ComAbstracts
URL: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/findarticles/journalism.htm
About: The core index of communication journals, with bibliographic records and abstracts for over 120 journals. Does not contain the article full text.
Searching Tips: Use the “Check your library for full text access” link in the article records to link to the E-Journal Finder to see if the library has full text access to the content through another database. If no full text is available, check Chinook for the library's print holdings.
Academic Search Premier
URL: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/findarticles/journalism.htm
About: Provides full text journal coverage for nearly all academic areas of study - including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.
Searching Tips: You can limit your results to full text only, by date of publication, by publication type (i.e. “newspaper”) or by specific title. You can expand your results by searching the full text of the article. You can email the articles or print the full text or PDF, where available.
Recommended News Resources |
LexisNexis Academic
URL: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/findarticles/alpha-l.htm
About: Interdisciplinary database that contains the full text of national, international, and regional news, newswires, transcripts, magazine articles, legal and business information, public opinion polls, and other sources.
Searching Tips: Choose the Guided Search option to refine your search. You need to choose a news category and news source for your search. You then can limit your results by date of publication and by specific publication title. You can email the full text of individual articles, or mark multiple articles and email only citations.
Factiva
URL: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/findarticles/alpha-f.htm
About: A news and business information database that includes content from over 9,000 sources. Factiva is heavy on global content and includes financial news and reporting from a variety of news wires.
Searching Tips: You can search Factiva by source or by source type in order to limit the number of publications you search at once. Use the drop down menu near the bottom of the search screen to choose whether or not to search the full text or headline/author of the articles.
Newspaper Research Guide (part of the Journalism Subject Guide)
URL: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/subjectguides/journalism/
If you have further questions on finding newspaper articles through the library databases, please see this newspaper research guide (or contact me directly).
Accessing Library Resources from Off-Campus |
The easiest method of accessing library databases from off campus is through the use of the VPN (Virtual Private Network). Current CU-Boulder students, staff, and faculty need to install the VPN software on their computer and login to the VPN using their IdentiKey account.
Complete instructions on downloading and using the VPN software can be found at the ITS VPN Information Page: http://www.colorado.edu/its/vpn/ . For questions (and answers) about using the VPN, please call the ITS Help Desk at (303) 735-HELP.
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