The Trexler Library: Muhlenberg College

Need help with your research? Contact:

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

Reference works

generally. . .

Credo Reference
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Online Reference Shelf
A subscription reference database including many well-known and respected reference works published ABC-CLIO, Routledge, and others.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org)
A communally-written encyclopedia. Anyone can edit or contribute an entry, at any time. Excellent for locating controversies on a topic and getting ideas for research papers. The bibliographies often point to scholarly resources. Not itself a scholarly source per se, with no authority control.

theory...

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (http://www.iep.utm.edu/)
Peer-reviewed, academic, open-access website. Authoritative.

Books

Trexler Library Catalog
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Catalog
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Library Catalogs
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.

Periodical articles 

general indexes with full text. . .

Academic Search Premier 
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases 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.

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.

JSTOR
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Full text peer-reviewed journals from the across the disciplines.

subject-specialty indexes. . .

America History and Life
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for U.S. history. Some full text.

Art Full Text
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for art history. Some full text.

Historical Abstracts
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for European history. Some full text.

MLA
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for film criticism and literary criticism. Some full text.

Philosopher's Index
Access: Trexler Library Home Page > Databases A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for philosophy. Some full text.

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 catalog (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library).

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/more/ill/index.html).

Can I search all the library databases and catalog together, in one search?

Most of the databases and the library catalog can be searched together in a new library search engine called Search Central found on the Trexler Library website. Most useful when working with narrow topics where you need everything that's available.  Several search features are missing from the original databases, like relevance, and language and peer review limiters.

Web search engines, directories, and selected sites

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

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.

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/reshelp/citations.html).

For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/).

© Muhlenberg College
Last modified: 21 October 2010