ENGLISH 1120

 

FINDING FULL-TEXT ARTICLES ON GENERAL SUBJECTS

Available from the list of Indexes and Databases by Subject

FULL-TEXT means: the complete article is available electronically through your computer and often can be e-mailed, downloaded to a floppy, or printed out. If not available in full-text, you will have to search AubieCAT to find the magazine/journal in our library.

INDEXES AND DATABASES means: collections of articles and citations to articles. These electronic products have been purchased through AU Libraries. THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS SURFING THE INTERNET.

 

InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP

1000 journals/magazines, 500 in full-text. Covers all disciplines, incl. general interest magazines. Most of full-text only covers last seven years; some goes back 15 years. Indexing also varies, but goes no further back than 1980. Allows search for peer-reviewed articles.

EbscoHost Academic Search Elite

Full-text of 1200 journals in the 1990s; indexing of 3000 journals going back to 1984. (1,700 peer-reviewed). Allows search for peer-reviewed articles in advanced search mode only.

LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic Universe
Provides access to a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.

Electric Library

Hundreds of magazines, newspapers, etc. EVERYTHING IN FULL-TEXT.
Allows natural language searching or keyword.

Intended for K-12, but can be useful for college students. SPECIAL FEATURE is its transcriptions of TV & radio news program, like 60 Minutes and Nightline.
NewsBank Newsfile and Global Newsbank
Covers local/regional US newspapers (Newsfile) and international newspapers and news sources (Global). All in full-text, but only covers selected topics.


(ALL OF THESE DATABASES ARE PURCHASED BY THE LIBRARY FOR STUDENT USE. THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB.)

ENGLISH 1120

FINDING INFORMATION THROUGH THE WORLD WIDE WEB

OR THE INTERNET

 

 

A few humble suggestions from your friendly librarians:

 
  1. There is a lot of good stuff on the Web; there is a lot of junk. (Think of the difference between Sixty Minutes and the Jerry Springer Show, or the New York Times and the National Inquirer, or the WWF and the NCAA wrestling championship.)
  2. So how can we tell the difference on the Internet? From the library's home page at (www.lib.auburn.edu), click on All Services, then L for Library Instruction. On the Library Instruction web page, select Caveat Lector, which includes a summary of how to determine the value of a Web site. You may also wish to peruse Why Evaluate Web Sites? for examples of questionable Web sites. More evaluation tips are available from other university libraries under Resources for Evaluating Web Sites.
  3. So how do we search the Internet?? Use the links from the Search the Internet link on the e-gateway library homepage. It allows you to choose from:

    4. ++Single Search Engines (like AltaVista, Google, AskJeeves)

    ++Meta Search Engines (like Metacrawler and Dogpile)

    ++Subject Directories (like Yahoo! and Britannica Internet Guide)

    (NOTE that Britannica gives stars, doing the evaluating for you.)

  4. Finally, the Library homepage provides links to a bunch of useful Internet sites. Click on the Search the Internet link from the library's home page, then Online Reference and you will find links to dictionaries, encyclopedias, job hunting, style manuals (IMPORTANT!), legal info, news, and much more.

Just remember: when you are finding articles through the Databases by Title or Databases by Subject pages, you are NOT really on the Internet.

 

 

(This handout is available online at: http://www.lib.auburn.edu/bi/1120guide.html)

 

 

J. Jenkins/ August 2001