CMST 115: Lessons from "Lost"
Library Resources


Larry Romans Bibliographer for Communication Studies

In this guide:    Reference Sources     Books     Articles     InterLibrary Loan     Citing Sources     Help

Getting Started: Reference Sources
A good place to get started with your research is with reference books. Located either online, or on the main (4th floor) of Central Library, reference works provide brief overviews and factual information. Central Library reference books of interest to this class:

Finding Books
Start in Acorn, Vanderbilt's online catalog. Acorn includes information about books, journals, magazines, newspapers, government documents, videos & dvds, cds, microfilm, and more - but does NOT include journal or magazine articles. All items are located on Vanderbilt's campus or have online access through the library website. There many ways to search Acorn: Keyword, Author, Title and by Library of Congress subjects. The default search in Acorn is a Keyword or WORDS anywhere search.

Search Tips:
· Narrowing a search:
         - Connect different concepts with the word AND. Example: media AND race
· Broadening a search:
         - Use the truncation symbol ($) to pick up variants of a terms. Example: child$ will retrieve items with the terms: child's, children, children's, etc.
         - Connect similar concepts with the word OR. Example: (youth OR children) AND media
· It may be necessary to try several searches, varying your key terms and combinations each time, in order to produce a manageable list of relevant items.
· Click on the DETAILS button to see more information about the book, including the Library of Congress subjects used to describe it. These subjects will often give you other terms to use in another search. Or, click on the subjects to launch a new search.


Finding Journal or Magazine Articles
Start in a general article database like ProQuest or InfoTrac which provide popular and scholarly articles on many topics. If ProQuest and InfoTrac don't have what you need for your assignment, consider a more specialized database. Find over 300 databases by subject or name on the Library's Articles & Databases page. For this class, try:

Many of our article databases have fulltext articles (the whole article is in the database). However, sometimes you'll only get a citation for an article that looks perfect for your paper. Vanderbilt subscribes to over 30,000 journals and newspapers, so chances are good that you'll be able to find the fulltext. There is a button by most citations. Click it for links that will check for fulltext copies or to see if we subscribe to the print journal. If there is no button, look up the title of the journal or magazine (not the title of the article) in Acorn to find out whether or not Vanderbilt has a copy.

If we don't have what you need at Vanderbilt, you can go to other resources like Athena, Kudzu or WorldCat and use our InterLibrary Loan service. Just remember these generally take between 3 days to 2 weeks to deliver requested materials.

For additional websites, start with the Subject Guides that librarians have created for different topics; visit Communication Studies .
Remember! Evaluate whether or not any website you find will meet your professor's requirements.

Citing Sources

See Style Guides for Writing and the citing sources FAQ.

Stuck? Need help? Ask a reference librarian! Feel free to stop by the reference desk, call 322-2407 or contact us through our services.

 

Updated 8.30.06