Research Tips from the Library Instruction Session for
Introduction to African-American Studies - AAS 1010
Instructor:
Teresa S. Unseld
Date: October 11, 2007
GETTING STARTED!
When studying African-American studies (or any other subject for that matter) at the Auraria Library, you will be doing the majority of your research online. If you want to find a book or an article, whether it be something in print in the Library or something available online, you will first have to search for that item online.
To search for books, videos, DVD's, CDs, musical scores, etc. you will need to use our online catalog, Skyline.
To search for magazine, journal or newspaper articles you will need to use one or more of our Article Database and Indexes.
LOOKING FOR BOOKS IN SKYLINE (the Library's catalog)
Access Skyline on the Auraria Library Home Page, at http://library.auraria.edu (look for it toward the center of the page, under "Find a Book"). Once there, do the following:
- Enter your search terms in the search box – These should be the title of a book or the name of an author, or a string of words that describe the kind of information you're looking for.
Example - for information on African-American inventors, enter: African-American inventors.
- Pick what kind of search you want to do, from the pull-down menu to the left of the search box
Pick Title if you're looking for a book, DVD, etc. by its name.
Pick Author if you want to search for books written by a certain person (but make sure you enter that person's last name first, then a coma and a space, and then their first name, or the search won't work properly).
When searching for something other than an author's name or the title of a book, pick either Subject or Keyword.
Picking Keyword will allow you to find any item in the catalog that has your search terms somewhere in its item record, regardless of what order those words might be in or in what context.
Example - if you were searching for information about Jack Johnson (the first African-American Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World) a search for: Jack Johnson, might pull up books entitled "Jack Johnson: Heavyweight Champion of the World" or "Howard Johnson" by Jack Smith (I made both of these titles up, just as examples).
Picking Subject will allow you to find any Subject Heading in the catalog (and any titles under that heading) that is identical to your search terms.
Example - a search for: Jack Johnson, will pull up nothing, because that is not the exact name of the Subject Heading for information about that individual. The name you would need to find materials of this kind would be: Johnson, Jack 1878 1946.
- Click on Go.
If your search in Skyline does not provide you with useful results, either change your search terms, or change the field you are searching in, or both.
If it does provide useful results, then please note the Title, Location, Call Number and Status of each item you wish to use. Bring that information to the Reference Desk, and the Librarians there will help you to locate those items!
SEARCH TERMS !
It may be useful to say a few words at this point about search terms !
When researching African-American Studies it is important to remember that your search results will vary depending on how and when you use the term "African-American".Because it is a hyphenated name, it is important to know that your search results using that name may vary greatly depending on whether you add or delete the hyphen.
Example - a search for African-American history in Skyline will produce 1477 items, while one for African American history (note the absence of the hyphen) will produce 2103. The reason for the difference in results is that in the first instance Skyline is looking for an item that has the words "African-American" and "history" in the record, while in the second it is looking for one that contains "African", "American" and "history".
It is also important to remember that the name "African-American" has only been widely used in the United States for the last 15 years or so. In the late 1960s, and in the 70's and 80's, "Black" was more frequently used, and the 40's, 50's and the early to mid 60's "Negro" was even used. I point this our because if you are searching for books or articles written about African-American studies that were published prior to 1990 (and there are many, by excellent authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, etc.) the names "Black" and "Negro" may be used frequently, if not exclusively. That being said, it is also important to point out that books and articles written about Africans and African-Americans (though seldom by Africans and African-Americans) that were published before 1960 are somewhat more likely to contain historical inaccuracies and cultural biases. Therefore, be cautious in using such resources unless you know or can find out the scholarly reputation of the author.
ARTICLE DATABASES AND INDEXES
What if you can't find books on your topic by searching Skyline? Then search for articles on it on the Library's Article Databases and Indexes page! To do this, go to our homepage at http://library.auraria.edu and do the following:
- Click on "Research Tools" on the left-hand side of the homepage, and then pick "Databases" from the resulting pull-down menu . There you will find roughly 170 article databases (in alphabetical order by the title of the database)
.
- Pick a Subject to search from the "List databases by subject" pull-down menu. Articles on African-American Affairs could potentially be found under the subject headings: "Political Science", "News", or even "International Affairs", but I would suggest that you search under the headings "History" and "African-American Studies" to begin with.
- Under the two subject headings I've suggested, see the database Jstor for African-American historical information, Ethnic NewsWatch for African-American current affairs, and Oxford African-American Studies Center for biographies, images and primary documents.
- Certain of these databases, such as Ethnic NewsWatch, will require you to separate your search terms with what are called "Boolean" separators. These are: AND, OR and NOT (sometimes shown as AND NOT).
Put AND between those search terms that all have to be contained in the articles you are searching for.
Example: if you're looking for the history of the recent civil war in Liberia (a country founded by African-Americans), your search will most probably have to contain the words civil, war and Liberia, and should be searched for as civil AND war AND Liberia.
Put OR between two terms to indicate that only one of the two terms needs to come up in your search results, and that it doesn't really matter which one does. You would normally only do such a search when the two terms in question have the same or similar meanings.
Example: if you're looking for the history of the recent civil war in Liberia, mentioned above, you might want to search for Liberia AND civil AND (war OR conflict). Requiring that either of these last two words, but not both, be present in the articles retrieved by your search is reasonable, because both words have similar meanings (at least in this context). Requiring that both to be present however, would be unnecessary and probably redundant and possibly keep you from getting access to some of the articles you need.
Put NOT (or AND NOT) in front of those search terms that you don't want to be contained in the articles you're searching for.
Example: as regards the history of the recent civil war in Liberia, that conflict largely coincided with, and to some degree overlapped with, another civil war in the neighboring country of Sierra Leone. A search for one of these civil wars often brings up results for the other. If you were uninterested in the conflict in Sierra Leone, and didn't want it to come up in your search results, you could do that with the following search: Liberia AND civil AND (war OR conflict) NOT (Sierra Leone).
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANYTHING ABOVE, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME (see my contact information at the top of the page). You can also go to the Reference Desk in the Library, or call them at 303-556-2585.
Thank you!
Thomas Beck
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