Use a Library Portal to Access Credible Sources

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Easy access to the Internet may lead you to rely heavily or even exclusively on popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and even YouTube to locate supporting material. In doing so, however, you risk overlooking key sources not found on those sites and finding false and/or biased information. To circumvent this, begin your search at your school’s or town’s library portal, or electronic entry point into its holdings (e.g., its home page).

As with its shelved materials, a library’s e-resources are built through careful and deliberate selection processes by trained professionals.1 When you select a speech source from a library’s print or electronic resources, you can be assured that an information specialist has vetted that source for reliability and credibility. No such standards exist for popular Web search engines. Not only that, but libraries purchase access to proprietary databases and other resources that form part of the deep Web—the large portion of the Web that general search engines cannot access because the information is licensed and/or fee-based. For a list of resources typically found on library portals, see Table 10.1.

  • Full-text databases (newspapers, periodicals, journals)
  • General reference works (dictionaries, encyclopedias, quotation resources, fact books, directories)
  • Books and monographs
  • Archives and special collections (collected papers, objects and images, and scholarly works unique to the institution)
  • Digital collections (primary documents, e-books, image collections)
  • Video collections
Table 10.1: Table 10.1 TYPICAL RESOURCES FOUND ON LIBRARY PORTALS

Access Journal Articles

A key benefit of beginning your research at a library portal is the ability to access scholarly research articles and peer-reviewed journals, which contain some of the most cutting edge and reliable research on almost any topic. To see what’s available, begin with a general database such as Academic Search Complete; Academic OneFile; Academic Search Premier; and LexisNexis Academic. (Your library portal may also offer a combination search option that allows you to search several general databases simultaneously.) For more targeted searches, proceed to a subject-specific database, such as those listed in Table 10.2.

Access Books

To locate books at your college library or other libraries, use Worldcat, which searches library collections in the United States and worldwide. Another resource is Google Books, which permits you to search and preview millions of books.

SUBJECT AREA DATABASES
Business
  • ABI/INFORM covers journals and news in business, management, economics, and related fields.
Science
  • Web of Science indexes science articles and some engineering journals.
Medicine and allied health
  • PubMed is the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database of citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
  • CINAHL searches nursing and allied health literature.
  • Alt HealthWatch focuses on contemporary, holistic, and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.
Public affairs
  • PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service) holds political science and public policy articles, books, and government documents.
  • iPoll Databank (Roper Center for Public Opinion Research) searches polling data from 1935 to the present.
Ethnic and minority-specific viewpoints and research
  • Ethnic NewsWatch covers newspapers, magazines, and academic journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
Table 10.2: Table 10.2 SUBJECT-SPECIFIC DATABASES

Access Popular Magazines

To find general-interest publications and newspapers, try General OneFile,InfoTrac (which also searches scholarly publications), or your library’s equivalent databases. For the kinds of information available in journals, books, and popular magazines, see Chapter 9.