Rootlessness in America

Need help with your research? Contact:

Kelly Cannon
Outreach and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Humanities & Business Subject Specialist
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
IM (AIM, Yahoo, MSN): refcannon
Reference desk IM: talktotrexler

Where can I go for brainstorming and narrowing my topic?

Encycopedia of Population (Reference Collection 304.603 E56o)
See entries on "internal migration" and "international migration." Includes reference list with such titles as Why People Move: Exploring the 2000 Current Population Survey.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
A good source for brainstorming for ideas, and narrowing a topic. A communally-edited site. Non-scholarly. Compare this resource to Scholarpedia (http://www.scholarpedia.org/).

How do I locate statistical data?

American FactFinder (http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en)
Easy-to-use access point to U.S. Census data. Try clicking on Search > Keyword > Select a Subject > Migration.

Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online
(http://0-hsus.cambridge.org.library.muhlenberg.edu/)
Time series data. Try a search on "mobility" or on "internal migration."

Pew Internet and American Life Project
(http://www.pewinternet.org/)
This nonprofit research center is famous for studying the effects of technology on American life, including how it affects personal relationships, travel, commuting, etc.

Statistical Abstract of the United States (http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS2878)
Summary of most statistical data produced by the U.S. government. This publication is also available in hard copy in Trexler Library, level A, Statistical Reference 317.3 U58s. See especially the references to the U.S. Census Current Population Survey on Geographic Mobility.

University of Michigan Statistical Resources on the Web (http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html)
A gateway to domestic and international statistical data. Try section on "Travel."

How do I find scholarly books on my topic?

Trexler Library Catalog
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) > catalog.
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Books, videos, music
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.

Periodical articles (popular and scholarly)

general indexes with full text. . .

Academic Search Premier
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Good starting place for journals, and includes the full text of about 3000 journals. Limit to "peer reviewed" to find only scholarly articles. Back issues of journals begin as early as 1990. Recent issues may not be included yet, due to publisher agreement. Journals held in Trexler Library are marked accordingly.

JSTOR
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
Archive from Stanford University of scholarly journals in all subject areas.

LexisNexis Academic
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
News archive (newspaper, newswires, and news transcripts), updated daily, from around the world.

Project Muse
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
Recent archive of journals from a number of academic presses.

subject-specialty indexes. . .

America History & Life
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for U.S. history. Some full text.

Business Source Elite
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for business research. Abundant full text.

Sage Journals Online
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
All full text. All academic. Covers many of the social sciences including studies of popular culture.

Sociological Abstracts
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
Indexing of scholarly articles in sociology.

getting to the full text. . .

Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > catalog.

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > ILL

Search engines

Popular

Google (http://www.google.com)
Non-selective. One of the largest web crawlers.

Scholarly (use with discretion)

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
An open-access web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Check our Journal Locator (see above) to see if Muhlenberg has access to the full text.

Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/)
The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in the database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.

Evaluating resources

Visit Trexler Library's Evaluating Resources page. ACCESS: Trexler Library website >Getting Started.

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Citation Guides.