CST 100: Principles of Public Speaking (Damdul-Manassas)

This page contains important information that will help you use the library catalog and library databases more effectively. If you have any questions, please contact me This link opens in a new window. 😃 

If you’re off campus, you’ll be prompted to sign-in before you can access electronic resources from the library catalog and in the databases. Use your MyNOVA username and password.

In order to search the library catalog and most databases, you'll need to come up with one or two keywords to use. The easiest thing to do is use your topic as your keywords. If you have two concepts, type them into two different search fields. Don't type sentences or questions into the search fields.

The library catalog and most databases provide the following helpful filters to narrow down your search results:

1. Full Text: This filter removes all search results that do not include the full text of the article. Some of the search results only include the citation and abstract of an article. If you find an article that doesn't include the full text and want a copy of the article, contact me This link opens in a new window and I will try to get a copy from another library.

2. Publication Date: If your topic is about a current event, you'll want sources published recently, i.e., the last few years. If your topic is a historical event, you could use sources that were published from the time that the event occurred to the present day. 

3. Source Type:

   • Newspapers and Magazines: These are considered "popular" sources, opposed to "academic" or "scholarly" sources. (For more information about popular versus academic sources, see Scholarly and Popular Materials This link opens in a new window by UNLV Libraries.) They are good places to start because they are written for the general public, so they tend to be easy to understand. They also tend to be short: from several paragraphs to several pages.
   • Academic Journals: These are considered "academic" or "scholarly" sources, opposed to "popular" sources. (For more information about popular versus academic sources, see Scholarly and Popular Materials This link opens in a new window by UNLV Libraries.) They are written by experts (usually academics) for other experts, so they can to be difficult to understand. They're usually about a very narrow topic, such as a new research study (in the sciences) or a new interpretation of a literary work (in the humanities). They also tend to be long: from 10 to 20 pages. The vast majority of articles published in academic journals go through a peer review process.

4. Peer Reviewed: This filter will remove all search results that are not from peer reviewed publications. The vast majority of search results that will be left once you apply this filter will be articles from academic journals. Most, but not all, academic journals are peer reviewed. If you want to find out whether a particular academic journal is peer reviewed, search for the title of the journal in UlrichsWeb This link opens in a new window. For more information about the peer review process, see the following videos:

   • How does peer review make research more trustworthy? This link opens in a new window - Cambridge University Press
   • The Peer Review Process This link opens in a new window - American Chemical Society

The library catalog and most databases provide the following helpful tools:

1. Citation: This tool provides the citation for the selected item. The citation is usually given in several formats, including MLA and APA.

2. Email: In the library catalog, this tool lets you email the selected record of an item to yourself. In databases, this tool lets you email the selected article to yourself. Most databases give you the option to include the citation of the article, in the style that you select, in the same email. 

3. Permalink: When you're using library databases, the URLs that appear in your browser’s address field are temporary and expire once you close all your browser windows. This means that if you copy and paste the URL somewhere, then click on it later, it will not take you back to the page in the database that you were on; it will just give you an error message. If you want to save the URL of a page in a library database, use the permalink tool. This generates a URL that is permanent, so it will take you back to the page in the database that you were on.