Milne Library: Composition 100: Benjamin

Composition 100

Research Resources, Milne Library, SUNY College at Oneonta, Fall 2003
Professor Benjamin

Researching: Overview

Background information on your topic can often be found in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference works.
Find books (Books often treat a topic more comprehensively than journal articles. Books can be a good place to find an overview of a topic. References to additional articles and books can often be found in a bibliography at the end of a chapter.)
Find articles (Since journal articles are often more focused than books, they may provide more specific information than books. References to additional articles and books can often be found in a bibliography at the end of an article. Newspaper articles are usually geared to a general audience.)
Consider supplementary materials (such as internet sites)
Organize the findings.
Use the information to address the research topic.

Finding Books

WebOSCAR (link on the Milne Library home page)

WebOSCAR is Milne Library's online catalog of books, videos, compact discs, reserves, and other materials. It does NOT have information about individual journal articles. The Advanced Search feature allows limiting by language, collection, document type, year.

To view detailed information about an item, click on the number link on the left of the entry.
Availability is shown by numbers to the right (e. g. 1/0). The first number is the number owned by the library; the last number is how many are checked out.
Subjects are listed at the bottom of the detailed entry. These subjects will link to other materials on the same exact subject.

A FIND search allows you to search by fields such as author, subject, words in title, exact title.

Keyword or 'All fields' searches are useful if you do not know the precise subject, title or author. If you are unsure of the ending of a word or wish to search the stem of a word, use the wildcard symbol * .

comput* (finds computer, computing, computation. etc.)

Keywords can be linked by the search operators “and”, “or”, and “not” to broaden or narrow searches:

new deal and agriculture (use of “and” narrows a search)

rain or precipitation (use of “or” broadens a search)

advertising not television (“not” eliminates records with the second term)

A BROWSE search displays an alphabetical list of entries. This is particularly useful when you don't know the exact author, title, or subject heading.

World War, 1939-1945 -- United States; Jung, C. G (Carl Gustav) 1875-1961; Name of the rose
: For complex subjects, you may find it easier to browse the print Library of Congress Subject Headings (multi-volume red books by the computers near the Milne Library Reference Desk) to find the appropriate subject headings for your topic.

Hartwick College (link on the Milne Library home page)

SUNY Oneonta students may borrow materials with a valid SUNY ID card.

Finding Articles

There are about 100 major databases available to College at Oneonta students and faculty. A detailed listing is available under Find Articles (link on the Milne Library home page).

General databases:

Expanded Academic ASAP (link on the Milne Library home page)

Indexes magazines and scholarly journals. Contains over 10,000,000 articles from about 2300 journals, newspapers, and magazines (1300 are full text) from 1980 to the present.

JSTOR archive

Provides access to the full text of 322 scholarly journals across many subject areas. The objective of JSTOR is to provide all issues back to Volume 1, Issue 1 for all journals. (Due to copyright restrictions, the most recent 3-5 years are unavailable.)

Lexis-Nexis (link on the Milne Library home page)

Provides articles from major newspapers (as well as legal and business information). Most materials are full text. Coverage varies, but is generally from about 1980 to the present.

New York Times archive, 1851-2001

The New York Times archive provides full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. It is possible to limit by article type including: classified ad, display ad, editorial cartoon, letter, comic, editorial article, review, stock quote, weather, legal notice, and real estate transaction.

How to determine if Milne Library owns a journal and its location:

Milne Library does not own everything you can locate in an index such as Expanded Academic ASAP. You need to check the Milne Library Serials List or OSCAR to determine if the library owns a print copy of a journal or magazine. To see if the article is available full text online, check the Milne Library Full Text Electronic Journal Holdings (Serials Solutions) (link on the Milne Library home page under Find Articles)

Journals and magazines are kept in the Periodical Room in the basement of the library, filed on the shelves alphabetically by title. Although the majority of journals and magazines are in print format, some are in microform format. If Milne Library does not own a magazine or journal, it can often be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan. Interlibrary loan usually takes two weeks, so be sure to allow plenty of time.

Finding Web Sites

There are several types of search tools:

Search Engines: Search engines create their listings using automated software without evaluating the contents (How a Search Engine Works) Google (Advanced Search) is one of the best search engines as of today (March 2003).

MetaSearch Engines: These services search several search engines in a single sweep. Although complex searching is not available with these engines, they provide a good starting place. Examples include Vivismo, Queryserver, Ixquick.

Subject Directories: Humans select, sometimes evaluate, and organize (by subject) the listings in a directory. Use a directory to browse and to find the "best" sites on a general or popular topic. Examples of subject directories include Librarian's Index to the Internet, and Yahoo! (which defaults to a search engine if no hits are found). Also includes Milne Library Internet/Subject Reference Resources.


How do you know if the information you find on the web is reliable? Unlike the traditional publishing process in which editors select, edit and review material to be put in print, the process of getting "published" on the Internet involves simply having the few technical skills needed to create a page and upload it to a server. Web content is not selected, reviewed, organized, evaluated, or certified by any overseeing body or authority. Anyone can publish on the web, and no one is going to prevent him or her from doing so. Here is an excellent guide to evaluating web sites:

Indiana University Libraries, Evaluation Web Sites (pdf version) Indiana University Libraries, Evaluation Web Sites (web page version)

Web Evaluation Exercise



How to Write a Bibliography. Covers both APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) styles.

This page created by Nancy Cannon, Revised by Kay Benjamin
Milne Library, SUNY College at Oneonta
Last revised November 2003

http://www.oneonta.edu/library/courses/fall2003/comp100benjamin.html