COM LIT R1B: Mobility

Campus Library Map

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:28:10 -0700

Click on the image below to see a larger interactive version of the campus library map.

You can also view/download a PDF map of library locations. For library contact information and building addresses, visit our directory.

Off-campus Access to Library Resources

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:35:19 -0700

Before you can access Library resources from off campus make sure you have configured your computer with proxy server settings.

After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource.

Starting Points

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:02:30 -0700

1. Read an introduction to the campus libraries for undergraduates.

2. Set up your computer for off campus access to library databases.

3. Need a map of the campus libraries? Doe and Moffitt floor plans are here.

4. Each library has its own hours and they may change on holidays and between semesters - click on the calendar for each library to view a month at a time.

5. Information about citing your sources and links to guides for frequently used citation styles here.

Beyond the Web

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 10:57:22 -0700

"It's all free on the Internet, right? Why should I go through the library's website to find sources for my paper?"

The Web is a great source for free, publicly available information. However, the Library pays for thousands of electronic books, journals, and other information resources that are available only to the campus community. Through the Library website, you can access hundreds of different licensed databases containing journal articles, electronic books, maps, images, government and legal information, current and historical newspapers, digitized primary sources, and more.

You access these resources through the Internet, using a browser like Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer -- but these databases are not part of the free, public Web. Resources like Lexis-Nexis, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and ARTstor are "invisible" to Google. You will not see results from most library databases in the results of a Google search.

Want to find out more? Get started exploring the Library's electronic resources, or find out how to get access to licensed resources from off-campus.

This guide has been archived

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:32:06 -0700

Please note: this course guide was created during a previous semester, and is no longer being actively maintained. For a list of current course guides, please see http://lib.berkeley.edu/alacarte/course-guides.

What is Peer Review?

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:33:03 -0800

Your instructor may want you to use "peer reviewed" articles as sources for your paper. Or you may be asked to find "academic," "scholarly," or "refereed" articles. What do these terms mean?

Let's start with the terms academic and scholarly, which are synonyms. An academic or scholarly journal is one intended for a specialized or expert audience. Journals like this exist in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Examples include Nature, Journal of Sociology, and Journal of American Studies. Scholarly/academic journals exist to help scholars communicate their latest research and ideas to each other; they are written "by experts for experts."

Most scholarly/academic journals are peer reviewed; another synonym for peer reviewed is refereed. Before an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it's evaluated for quality and significance by several specialists in the same field, who are "peers" of the author. The article may go through several revisions before it finally reaches publication.

Magazines like Time or Scientific American, newspapers, (most) books, government documents, and websites are not peer-reviewed, though they may be thoroughly edited and fact-checked. Articles in scholarly journals (in printed format or online) usually ARE peer-reviewed.

How can you tell if an article is both scholarly and peer-reviewed?

How to Narrow Your Topic

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:09:43 -0700

"I'm writing a paper on World War II."

Often students start their research with a very general topic, even though they may realize the topic is too large to deal with in a 10-15 page paper. Faculty and librarians tell them, "You have to narrow this down." But how do you narrow a topic?

Ask yourself--

What discipline am I working in? If you are in a sociology class, ask a sociological question about World War II, like "How did WWII affect women?" If it's a political science class, your question might be something like "How did WWII affect presidential elections in the US?"

What are some subsets or aspects of your topic. Some good aspects are:
- by place, such as a country or region
- by time period, such as a century, decade or year
- by population, such as men, women, ethnic group, youth, children or elderly

You can combine these ideas, "What were the major impacts of WWII on women in France, in the decade after the war?"

More ideas in our brief tutorial on topic selection and narrowing.

Library Workshop: Research 101

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:08:25 -0700

Unsure how to start a paper or research project? Think maybe you could stand to brush up on search strategies?

If this sounds familiar, Library Workshop: Research 101 has you covered. This interactive tutorial explores six stages of the research process. You can view it from start to finish, or focus on specific sections as needed:

1: Begin Your Research

Starting strategies, from choosing a topic to finding the right keywords.

Google Books

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:35:16 -0700

Google Books contains millions of scanned books, from libraries and publishers worldwide. You can search the entire text of the books, view previews or "snippets" from books that are still in copyright, and read the full text of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) books. Want to read the entire text of an in-copyright book? Use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.

Why use Google Books?

Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. Try it now:

Searching Library Catalogs

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:54:25 -0800

Use OskiCat to locate materials related to your topic, including books, government publications, and audio and video recordings, in the libraries of UC Berkeley. OskiCat will show you the location and availability of the items that we own.

Using OskiCat (but not Melvyl) you can also renew your books online, look up course reserve materials by course number or instructor name, and place holds on items that other library users have already checked out.

Use Melvyl to locate materials related to your topic located at other campuses in the UC system, or worldwide. You can use the Request button to request an item from another library, if we don't own it.

Using Melvyl (but not OskiCat) you can find articles as well as books, easily format a citation for copying into a bibliography, and see images of book covers, when available. Melvyl will also show you the location and availablity of items that we own.

Melvyl has changed as of January 2012, and now includes many more articles. Detailed Melvyl help

ebrary = ebooks

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:54:47 -0700

Where's the PDF?

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:45:13 -0800

Many article databases contain information about articles (citations or abstracts), not the entire text of the article. Once you've used an article database to find articles on your topic, you may need to use this button: in order to locate and read the full text of the article. The UC-eLinks button appears in nearly all the databases available from the UCB Library website.

UC-eLinks will link you to the online full text of an article if UCB has paid for online access; otherwise, UC-eLinks will help you locate a print copy on the shelf in the library. If UCB doesn't own the article in print or online format, UC-eLinks can also help you order a copy from another library.

For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 4 min.)

You can also set up UC-eLinks to work with Google Scholar. For more information, watch this video tutorial (about 2 min.)

Literary Criticism and Resources

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 29 May 2012 13:37:37 -0700

Media History Databases

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:04:46 -0800

America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts index scholarly articles published in history journals. The rest of these databases provide access to digitized primary sources, including images, motion pictures, newspaper articles, letters, diaries, and more.

More Resources

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:37:00 -0800

Can't find an article database in this guide that's relevant for your topic? Use the Library's Article Databases by Subject page to find and search recommended databases for your subject area. Or try the general Find Articles page to see a complete listing of all article databases, including news databases and book and film review databases.

Media Resources Center

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:41:02 -0700

The Media Resources Center (MRC) is the UC Berkeley Library's primary collection of materials in audio and visual formats. These formats include videocassettes, DVDs, compact audio discs, audiocassettes, and online (streamed) audio and video.

See the MRC's website for a very detailed listing of films in their collection, by topic; this is a great resource for American/cultural studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, dance and performance studies, and many other subjects. Click on Collections to start browsing.

The Media Resources Center is located on the 1st floor (basement) of Moffitt Library but has shorter hours of operation than Moffitt. You can view MRC materials in the MRC viewing rooms, but the materials cannot be checked out.

Theater, Dance and Performance

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:33:57 -0700

Art Images and Art History Databases

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:40:19 -0800

Databases for Film Studies

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:55:29 -0800

The MLA Bibliography can also be a good source for film criticism, particularly for films that were adapted from novels.

Formatting Citations

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:54:27 -0700

MLA Formatting and Style Guide from Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab)
Citing Your Sources - a brief online guide to the main citation styles and a brief discussion on what constitutes plagiarism.
MLA handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th edition. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
Doe Reference Reference Hall LB2369 .G53 2009
Main Gardner Stacks LB2369 .G53 2009
Many older editions available throughout the UCB libraries.
The Chicago Manual of Style (UCB-only access)
15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003. Searchable, online version of the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition).
Many print editions available throughout the UCB Libraries.
Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More (UCB-only access) Charles Lipson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006.
Many print editions throughout the libraries.
Columbia Guide to Online Style (UCB-only access)
Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor. 2nd ed. NY: Columbia Univ. Press. 2006.
Many print editions throughout the UCB libraries.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:39:23 -0700

In order to avoid plagiarism, you must give credit when

You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.
You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.
You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word.
You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.

Recommendations

Begin the writing process by stating your ideas; then go back to the author's original work.
Use quotation marks and credit the source (author) when you copy exact wording.
Use your own words (paraphrase) instead of copying directly when possible.
Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
If the form of citation and reference are not correct, the attribution to the original author is likely to be incomplete. Therefore, improper use of style can result in plagiarism. Get a style manual and use it.
The figure below may help to guide your decisions.

This content is part of the Understanding Plagiarism tutorial created by the Indiana University School of Education.

Citation Management Tools

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:24:54 -0800

Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, organize and store your PDFs, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but all are easier than doing it by hand!

Zotero: A free plug-in for the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service. Zotero is also available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
- Zotero help from the UCB Libraries
- Zotero help from zotero.org
RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
- RefWorks help from the UCB Libraries
- RefWorks help from RefWorks
EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. You can purchase EndNote from the Cal Student Store.

Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.

All Questions Welcomed!

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:00:52 -0700

"There are no dumb questions!"

That's the philosophy of reference librarians, who are here to save you time and trouble. If you get stuck, you can talk to a reference librarian at any campus library.

Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:22:45 -0800

You can type your question directly into this chat window to chat with a librarian. Your question may be answered by a reference librarian from Berkeley, from another UC campus, or another academic library elsewhere in the US. We share information about our libraries to make sure you get good answers.

If the librarian can't answer you well enough, your question will be referred to a Berkeley librarian for follow-up.

Have fun chatting!

Research Advisory Service

hthams@library.berkeley.edu (Heather Thams) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:36:28 -0800

Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates

Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics.

Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)

This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.