Who Needs Mother Nature?

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FINDING ARTICLES

Academic Search Premier contains full text for more than 4,000 scholarly and popular journals covering academic areas like the medical sciences, ethnic studies, education, humanities, etc.

General Science and Biological & Agricultural Index both index scholarly and popular periodicals which have information on biology and agriculture plus many more scientific topics. Full text of some journals available.

IngentaConnect is a table of contents service for over 28,000 publications since 1988. It contains approximately 15,000,000 citations to articles with the number increasing daily.

Lexis-Nexis Academic is a full-text database of major newspapers, newswires, select trade journals and magazines.

Morning Call is the full-text of the Allentown, PA newspaper from 1984 to the present.

OmniFile (Wilson) is a full-text "mega" database whose scope includes all academic disciplines.

PsycINFO provides indexing of scholarly journals in Psychology published from 1887 to the present.

Sociological Abstracts (SocAbs) provides access to the latest research in sociology and related discplines in the social behavioral sciences like cultural and social structures, demography and human biology, environmental interactions, etc.

JOURNAL LOCATOR

To check to see if Trexler Library has access to a journal title, try the Journal Locator. Follow the path: Trexler Library Home PageFinding ArticlesJournal Locator. Once there type in the name of the journal you are looking for. The locator will then inform you that there is either no exact matches or will indicate access points for the journal. Access points include full text in one of the library's journal databases or print holdings which would be on the shelves in the library.

TREXLER LIBRARY CATALOG

Search the Trexler Library Catalog (http://library.muhlenberg.edu) to find books the library owns.



A keyword search produces a broad list of results.  Use with Boolean Operators.
Use OR between like concepts or synonyms.  Use AND between different concepts.
		Example:  humans and nature

	
A subject heading search produces a small, exact list of results.
	Library of Congress Subject Headings specifically for TLC
		Example: biophilia  

WORLDCAT

To expand your journal search considerably, try WorldCat. Follow the path: Trexler Library Home PageFinding BooksWorldCat. WorldCat is a unified catalog of many libraries in the U.S. and other parts of the world. This is a powerful search tool for books, web resources, and other materials on any subject. It will list area libraries if there are any and their holdings for that journal title.

OTHER LIBRARIES

As a Muhlenberg student, you have access and borrowing privileges to a number of college libraries in the Lehigh Valley. The Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges includes Cedar Crest College, DeSales University, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, and Moravian College. The web page for Other Libraries (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/books/other_libraries.html) will give you online access to their catalogs. There are also many Research Libraries whose catalogs you may want to explore.

E-ZBORROW

This is a new way to borrow books from over 60 libraries in Pennsylvania and two each in West Virginia and New Jersey. It is a searchable catalog with interlibrary loan capabilities built in. You can only borrow books. The turnaround time is between 2-3 days. Follow the path: Trexler Library Home PageFinding BooksE-ZBorrow Catalogs.

Books and journals not found in Trexler Library can be ordered through Interlibrary Loan (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/more/ill/index.html).
Remember, start early to allow enough time to receive them. It could take anywhere from 7 days to 2 weeks.

Navigating Principles:

1. Use + to include words, - to exclude them.
   
2. The truncation symbol *, allows you to cut a word to the root and pull up varient endings.
   
3. To search by phrase, enclose the phrase in "double quotation marks".
   
4. Using capital letters usually look for exact match; when it doubt use lower case for your searches.
   
5. Look for a "limit" or "refine" search feature, that allows you to narrow your results by date, format or field.
   
6. If field searching is available, it will allow you to search the entire catalog by url, text, title word, anchor, image, filename, etc. (i.e., see Altavista and Hotbot).
   
7. Look for Page buttons at the bottom of the screen, that allows you to skip around to pages on similar topics.
   
8. "Advanced search", sometimes called "Power search", options generally shut off relevancy ranking and allow you to use Boolean Logic and proximity operators (AND, OR, NOT and NEAR) to control your results. These words are generally accepted in all caps, or have symbols that can be substituted.

Our Tips:

1. Look for on screen help to review search commands and features.
   
2. Look for a FAQ for information on who is putting it together, and what the scope or content is.
   
3. In many search engines, you will get the best search by using several keywords to look for what you are after.

First look at the web suffixes:
.com indicates a commercial source. Beware of information slanted in favor of that company's product or industry.
.edu addresses originate from colleges and universities, but this includes students' homepages as well as the official institution.
.gov indicates a government agency. This kind of information is of an official nature and generally as accurate as can be expected.
.int international organizations like NATO.
.mil military organizations.
.net companies or organizations that run large networks.
.org indicates a non profit institution, which may provide useful information, but may be biased toward a particular viewpoint.

Interpreting the basics:
Accuracy -- who wrote the page, is the person qualified, can you contact them and what is the purpose?
Authority -- check the url of the document and look for credentials?
Objectivity -- what subjects/issues are covered, is the page biased, how detailed is the information, what opinions are expressed, and are the opinions stated as facts.
Currency -- how many dead links are there and is the information on the page outdated?
Coverage -- is it all images or a balance of text and images and is the information cited correctly?

No matter where your information comes from, you always need to cite your sources. This is necessary to give the author proper credit for his or her work, as well as so that you or someone else could retrace the steps you took doing your research.

The most frequently used citations have been compiled by the reference librarians on a webpage and handouts. These can be found by following the path: Research Help Citation Guides.