Asst. Director for STEM Libraries & Engineering Librarian
Johnson Pavilion
3610 Hamilton Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Citing Your Sources
Here are resources providing guidance on how to format your papers from the Chicago Manual of Style:
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How to Read a Citation
Book citations generally show a publisher and a city of publication. Book chapters will include the title of the chapter as well as the name of the book.
Article citations have a journal/periodical title in addition to the article title. They will usually also show a volume and issue number, and may show a day and month.
While citations for types of social media posts may differ in the information they include, they will usually have a URL (address of a webpage) and a hosting site/platform title in addition to the post title. Depending on the length and type of post, the citation may also include the full text of the post (Twitter) or a description of the post.
Using Citations to Find Articles
If you have a complete article citation, search Franklin from the Penn Libraries homepage to find the full text of your article.
On the next page, click Articles+ to limit your search results to articles.
No luck? That doesn't mean we don't have access to the article - it could be available in print! Try searching the Catalog for the journal name as a next step.
Select Catalog and search using the journal name. If the library owns the journal, click on the journal name and confirm that they have the proper issue/volume/date by examining the item record page. If they do, you can request a scan of the article by selecting Digital Delivery (under locations where the journal is held).
Using Citations to Find Books
If your citation is a book, you will search Franklin from the Penn Libraries homepage.
Franklin will help you find the library in which the book is located, and the call number. You can search for a specific book by title, author, or ISBN. You can also do a keyword or subject keyword search to find books on a particular topic.
On the next page, click Catalog to limit your search results to eBooks, books, and other print material.
Other important resources for finding books:
- Pickup@Penn
- Books by Mail
- Other Libraries
- Reading Call Numbers - a visual guide from the University of Arizona Libraries
Keyword Searching
This document suggests a good method of crafting effective keyword searches:
PowerNotes
PowerNotes is software that helps you gather and organize research.
Have questions about PowerNotes? Tips, troubleshooting, and tutorials are here: https://www.blog.powernotes.com/help
Still need help? You can use the PowerNotes contact form, or you can contact the Penn Libraries -- be sure to include "PowerNotes" in your question, so it is routed to the correct librarian.
Background Resources
- ScienceDirectWeb database for scientific research that contains abstracts, articles and full text of Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences. Contains abstracts from the core journals in major scientific disciplines. The journals are arranged under subject areas for topical navigation.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences by ISBN: 9781118900772Publication Date: 2015-05-15
Scholarly Databases
These databases will help you find scholarly articles about your topic
- Articles+Articles+ searches through many of our Penn-subscribed journals, and brings you results all in one place.
- Google ScholarAccess to Google Scholar with Penn-only links to full-text articles. Once authenticated through Penn's proxy, full-text articles to which Penn Libraries subscribe will become available within the Google Scholar search results.
- JSTORJSTOR specializes in making available the back issues of journals in a wide variety of humanities and social science disciplines. Issues are available both as images and as text, making searching possible both within each title and across the whole database.
Penn's subscription currently includes all the available collections:
- the Arts & Sciences Collection I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and the Complement
- the Business II & III Collection
- the Biological Sciences Collection
- the Health & General Science Collection
- the Language and Literature Collection
- the Music Collection
- the 19th Century British Pamphlets
Access to journals from JSTOR is restricted to current Penn faculty, staff and students.
Printing from the JSTOR database requires downloading a helper application called JPrint.
Popular Sources
- FactivaCurrent and historical news from thousands of publications worldwide in over 20 languages. Company overviews and stock data are available for public companies.
- Nexis UniIndexes new, business, and legal resources.
- Polling the NationsPrimary data, fulltext for approximately 250,000 individual questions and aggregated responses, often cross tabulated by respondent characteristics, compiled from public opinion surveys. Topics cover social, health, economic, and political issues at local, state, national, and international levels.