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Choosing Appropriate Information Sources
After you decide what kinds of information you need, you must
determine where to find that information. Here are some starting
points.
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Think about what you already know about the subject. You have been
assigned this topic because it is relevant to your class studies or you
have chosen it because it interests you. Where would you expect
to find information?
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Librarians in each of the Libraries can help you determine what sources
may be most useful for your research. Librarians are available during
posted reference
hours, or you can make an appointment to meet with a librarian
at a time that is convenient for you.
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Use Blais,
the online catalog, to look for books owned by our Libraries. If you can
only use "scholarly monographs" (books from academic publishers), look
for those books published by university presses such as Oxford, Harvard,
or the University of Chicago.
Catalogs
from other libraries and groups of libraries will help you identify
books on your topic not owned by the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges.
Use Interlibrary
Loan to borrow any which are important for your research.
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Use periodical indexes to identify articles in journals and magazines.
In the Ovid database group, ABI
Inform includes scholarly and trade publications in business,
Readers Guide Abstracts (OmniFile)
covers popular magazines (including Time
and Newsweek). All the other databases in Ovid index articles in scholarly
journals: some, such as
General Science Abstracts (OmniFile), cover a wide range of subject areas;
thers, such as PsycINFO,
cover one subject very thoroughly. If you're not sure which databases would
be best for your subject research, check the Subject
Research Guides or Database
Subject Categories page to find suggestions. Although a few databases
go back many years, in most cases they only index articles published since
the early 1980's. Paper indexes provide information on articles published
before that time.
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If you need to find recent articles in newspapers, you can use
NewsBank Full-Text Newspapers
or LexisNexis Academic,
which includes the full text of most newspaper articles indexed. If you
need newspaper articles from more than about 10 years ago, you will have
to use the paper indexes for newspapers.
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World Wide Web indexes such as Yahoo
and search engines like
Google and Vivísimo
allow you to search for information on your topic on the web.
The UCLA College Library has developed a guide to help in selecting
the right source which you may also want refer to.
Need more help?
When you need help on your research project, talk to your professor,
stop by the Reference
Desk at one of the Libraries, make an appointment to talk with a Reference
Librarian, or talk with someone in the Writing
Resource Center on your campus.
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