Researching+with+the+Blinn+Library+Website for public speaking PDF

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Summary

Helpful supplements for Public Speaking class SPCH 1315...

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Conducting Research Online with the Blinn Library Website For online journal and newspaper/magazine articles, go to the Blinn library website( www.blinn.edu/library) and click on the “A-Z List of Databases”— For scholarly journal articles 

Academic Search Complete/EBSCO—has many full-text articles on a variety of topics available. Click on the database name. Academic Search Complete will fit many of your needs, but any of the EBSCO databases may be useful, depending on your topic. If you are off-campus, you will need to enter your username and password.

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Enter your search term

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Click the box that says “scholarly (peer reviewed)journal articles”, which in the right hand column, about halfway down the page. This will ensure that the search returns only the highest quality sources.

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If you like, you may click “full-text” and it will return only those articles that have the full-text available online

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Also awesome is Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). This works like a regular search engine and is more user friendly. Search for your topic here, and it will return high-quality scholarly journal articles and books. It does not have full test, but you can get the citation information and go look for the article in EBSCO or in-person by search the Library catalog.

For newspaper/magazine articles 

Newspaper search—will allow you to search articles published in magazines and newspapers from around the nation dating back several decades.

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Click on full-text so that the entire article appears

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Do NOT click the “scholarly (peer reviewed) journal articles” box as it will eliminate most of your results.

For books— 

Click “Search the Catalog” from the Blinn Library website. You can also find journals here (though it will not direct you to specific articles, so this is only useful if you already have the citation information for a journal article).

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Enter your search terms. You can search by subject, author, call number, etc. and it will tell you if the Blinn library has a copy.

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If I see a book that looks intriguing, I often find it useful to search for it on amazon.com to get a more complete look at the content of the book. There you can often see the table of contents, sample pages, reviews, etc which give you a better feel for the usefulness of the book that the entry on the library website does. If it looks like a good one, then go check it out in person at the library.

Other cool info—  

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There are some links to good information that you might find useful under the “useful Links” headings. The Statistics link had link to gsources for all kinds of statistics that you may find useful (US Census Bureau, FedStats which collects statistics from 100+federal agencies, National Center for Health Statistics, etc.) The Government link has links to many website with government information, including what’s going on in the US House and Senate and Texas House and Senate....