Become familiar with Discipline Specific Databases covering this area:
Communication Source -- indexes more than 1,000 journals in the area of coummunication and media studies
Sociological Abstracts-- The international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
Psycinfo--Access to the scholarly literature, both books and journals, in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
America: History and Life / Historical Abstracts--Access to articles covering multiple aspects of US history (prehistory to the present) and history of the world (1450 to the present).
These multi-disciplinary databases will help you find scholarly articles about your topic
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This document suggests a good method of crafting effective keyword searches:
This Critical Writing Program guide will help you to:
Book citations generally show a publisher and a city of publication and often an ISBN (13 digit number). Book chapters will include the title of the chapter as well as the name of the book. In examples below, note punctuation, italics, capitalization practices.
Model: Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.
Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Book chapter:
Model: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.
Example: O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer.
Journal article citations have a journal/serial title in addition to the article title and article author. They will usually also show a volume and issue number, and may show a date, month, or season.
Model: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages.
https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy [URL or DOI]
Example:
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896. [note--you may or may not have the DOI (direct object indicator)--which is a unique construction applied to online articles.]
If you have a complete article citation, search Articles+ on the Penn Libraries homepage to find the full text of your article..
No luck? That doesn't mean we don't have access to the article - it could be in print! Try using the PennText Article Finder as a next step.
To find the full-text of an article, enter the journal name into the PennText article finder. A pop-up box will give you options to access the article online, in print, or the option to request through interlibrary loan (or BorrowDirect/EZBorrow)
If your citation is a book, use Franklin, the Library catalog. 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.
Other important resources for finding books:
The Penn Libraries provide multiple ways to connect with books and journal articles that aren't immediately available to you in print or electronically, including:
BorrowDirect -- books from our Ivy league partners and a few others including Stanford and University of Chicago
EZ Borrow -- books from our Pennsylvania Partners and a few others including New York University
Scan and Deliver / Interlibrary loan -- for journal articles, chapters in books, and materials not available through our partnerships.
Use keywords from these titles to find more books on the topic. Checked out? Try making a request through our BorrowDirect or EZ Borrow options.