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McGraw-Hill's AccessScience is an online gateway to alibrary of science and technology information. Updated daily, AccessScience delivers the content of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 9th Edition, and the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, 6th Edition. The database contains more than 8,000 articles written by the leading figures in their fields.
Search tips: There are two ways to access information on this database. There is the encyclopedia and the science dictionary. By each entry which has a match with your search term, there will be a letter — E (Encyclopedia entry) D (Dictionary) R (Research updates) B (Biographies) N (News) and Q (Q&A). For example, my search term AUSTRALOPITHECUS, in the encyclopedia, found 66 entries in 29 documents. Each document gave a synopsis and I was able to look at them and decide which articles to read. The same search term in the dictionary came up with three entries in three documents. Each of these simply contains definitions.
American National Biography is designed for the general reader. Each entry is as clear as possible while maintaining a high level of scholarship. Depth is not sacrificed to breadth, and the collection provides a comprehensive examination of the incredible men and women who have shaped the history of the United States.
Search tips: There is a simple search in which you can enter the name of the person you on whom you need information. There are entries for those who were notable and already dead. For those in which you have an interest who are still alive, you may find them in the text for something else. For example, I looked up Rosa Parks. She has not yet been included, as she is recently deceased, but I did find mention of her in the text of The Civil Rights Movement, and I found enough information to get me started on my research.
This database has more that 2000 primary source documents as well as images, video and audio clips. These can all be accessed by searching words or phrases as well as the topics or timelines. Each document has an introduction that places the event in historical context. Very useful for American History.
Search tips: This Database has an excellent help page and a guided tour. Everything you need to know to search effectively is included on the page. On the sidebar, there is quick access to all the parts of the site.
Britannica Online contains the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica Student Encyclopedia, Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia, Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, Britannica Internet Guide and Videos.
Search tips: You may search by using the Index to find topics, to browse articles from A-Z like any encyclopedia, by looking at a particular year, subject or place, or by using the timeline. Britannica Online also has a very useful help page, accessible from any page by clicking on the browse button at the top of each page.
eLibrary is published by Proquest, and has categories of Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, almanac, atlas and other information. eLibrary is an online resource for delivering full-text and multimedia reference information. The easy-to-use interface makes research easy. eLibrary includes History Study Center and Proquest Learning: Literature.
Students are able to search for information from more than 2,000 full-text magazines, newspapers, books, and transcripts--plus thousands of maps, pictures and audio/video files.
Search tips: When a topic is entered into the search field, the results are displayed by category and are rated by relevance to the query and reading level of the entry. A complete list of the volumes included is available by clicking the view reference desk sources button.
Encyclopedia Britannica in Spanish. Includes the encyclopedia, a dictionary and a Spanish-English dictionary. Obviously, a good knowledge of Spanish will make your search, not to mention your understanding of the information you find, a lot easier.
Search tip: A simple search can be done by putting a term or word in the search field. You will want the word to be in Spanish, and you will find that the answer is, too, unless you are using the Spanish/English Dictionary. ¡Lo siento!
Grove Art Online is an award-winning resource on all aspects of the visual arts from prehistory to the present day, containing o ver 45,000 articles on fine arts, decorative arts, and architecture. In addition, it contains over 130,000 art images, and includes links to hundreds of museums and galleries around the world. Grove Art Online allows you to xplore over 21,000 biographies; artists, architects, photographers and designers to patrons, dealers, theorists and writers
Search tips: A wide range of search and browse options to explore the full text, bibliographies, biographies, and image links
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines. Because of JSTOR's archival mission, there is a gap, about 1 to 5 years, between the most recently published journal issue and the content available in JSTOR.
Search tips: When searching with JSTOR for a short term school project, I suggest checking the box for full text articles. It is frustrating to find the title of what looks like the perfect article for your research, and then to find that it is not actually available to you. Save yourself this distress. Search by terms through the entire database, or choose specific journals.
LitFinder includes searches for short stories, poems, essays, plays and speeches and has explanations, study guides, a glossary, pictures and more.
Search tips: In the initial search field, in addition to entering a search term, you can check a box to indicate the sort of literature you want or to search all the possibilities. Not all entries contain the full text of the story or poem, but many do. At least the entry will give a bit of background information on the author, the first line of the piece, and a reference to where the piece was initially published.
The OED online has the capacity not only to look up a word the definition of which you do not know, but you can also look up a word whose definition you know, but you cannot remember the word.
Search tips: It has very clear sample searches and a lot of help. When you have the entry for the word, at the top of the page there are buttons for pronunciation, spellings, etymology, quotations and date chart.
Oxford Reference Online is a fabulous reference in which you can find information on pretty much everything. It combines rich, scholarly resources with authoritative, quick-reference coverage of the full subject spectrum. It also offers a wide range of additional material such as maps, illustrations, and timelines. ORO brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource. I especially like the fact of the day, and it is possible to have that fact emailed to you daily.
Search tips: An efficient search option available from every page, quick searches look for matches in entry headings first, but will automatically default to a full text search if there are no results in entry headings. For more refined searches, such as to search across a defined range of subjects, or to find references to people or dates only use the advance search. You may also browse the entry headings from A-Z or choose a subject from the Home page to refine your search or browse.
Project MUSE is a unique collaboration between libraries and publishers providing 100% full-text, user-friendly online access to over 300 humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. A joint project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at JHU, journals from other publishers were first incorporated in 2000, with additional university press and scholarly society publishers joining in each subsequent year.
Search tips: This database is easily searchable with a query box. I tried a number of different searches from authors to literary criticism and found plenty with which to work.
Proquest is a library of serial or periodical titles, more commonly called magazines and newspapers. Presently it contains over 2,000 titles. Coverage goes back to about 1986, but it is not complete for every title. Some serials’ publishers only permit abstracts (short summaries) of articles in their publications. Some permit full and complete texts with all illustrations to be included. Some permit only part of their holdings to be reproduced in full.
Search tips: One can search by Word, by Publication, and by Topic.When searching by Word, one can do a Simple Search or an Advanced Search. When in doubt, use Search Wizard for tips. For example, "Nazi medical experiments" as a simple search yields fine results. But if you choose Advanced Search, and enter Nazi, medical, experiments on different lines, you retrieve many more hits. When in doubt, choose Advanced Search.
The New York Times from its inception to the present is available in full-text from this resource. To be successful in searching this massive database, it is necessary to have a date range and to use the proper syntax to state the query. USE HELP information; contact librarians if you cannot find what you seek.
Search Strategy Tips Use "" around words to be searched as phrases. Ex: "affirmative action" Use AND, OR, NOT to narrow a search. Ex: art AND censorship, gospels OR hymns, Navajo OR Navaho, astronaut NOT John Glenn. For terms with many possible endings, use truncation. Ex: child*
