REL217: Islamic Traditions 2017: Journal articles (Scholarly)

DON'T FORGET that books can also be scholarly sources.  Examining the author and publisher will help you determine if a book is scholarly (e.g. if the author is an academic/professor who studies that topic, or if the publisher is a university press).  You do not need to read the entire book either - often times a good chapter can be used as a source.  

When in doubt, ask Professor Schumm if you can use the source.

ACCESS:

• Sign in using your name and the last 5 digits of your Hollins ID barcode number (or your entire A number)

WHAT AM I SEARCHING?

• Academic Search Complete is a very large general interest collection of articles from scholarly journals, popular magazines, and newspapers.  These materials come from many different subject fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Keywords = terms important to your topic, NOT words such as of, then, where, what, etc.
• Think about your topic.  What other words are used to represent your key concepts?
• Pay attention to your results.  What other words are used to represent your concepts?
• Combine separate concepts (religion; war) with AND - if you enter the search string RELIGION WAR, the database will search for "journalism war," not journalism and war.
• Combine synonyms with OR.  Example: (religion OR reporting) AND war.

RESULTS:

• Some articles will have full-text; others will have only abstracts
• Sort by date or relevance (top of results page)
• Email or print the articles you are interested in (under Tools on the right-hand side of the record page)
• Get the properly formatted citation for an article (under Tools on the right-hand side of the record page)

NARROW RESULTS BY: OPTIONS

• By Source Type (limit to academic journals): not all articles in a scholarly publication will be peer-reviewed. 
• By Subject: a great way to find other keywords to use in your search and to limit your results.

NO FULL-TEXT?

• Click on Hollins Journal Finder. (Go to the Finding Full Text tab for further details).