Illinois History Research Guide: Find Articles & Books

To find books, go to the BOOKS tab in the box in the center of the library homepage.

1. In the blank for finding books enter the name or topic you are looking for.

For example: college student personnel

2. Check to make sure you are doing an Any word Anywhere (Keyword search). This will give the most and widest results, although not the most focused.

3. ​Review the list of titles in the results.  Look at the titles to see the variety of perspectives the books reflect about the topic. Some titles will be closer to the topic than others.

Title: Culture of the university: governance and education.
Call Number: LD732.9 .A55 Status: Available

Title: Student development practices
Call Number LB2343.4 .S87 Status: Available

4. Find the titles that best fit the topic area you are interested in. In this case the book Student Development Practices is a better fit for a paper on the search topic because it shows both the practice and goals of college student personnel specialists.

5. Look under the title and check to see if the book is available.

6. Look at the call number to find the book in the library.

Here are the basics steps using databases to search topics, sort results, and save content to write with.

Search

1. Go to the databases on the library homepage.

2. Enter keywords to the blanks. Nouns work best.
Example: student athletes

Sort

1. Limit the Results.
Limiting results helps reduce clutter, focus results, and adjust results to meet research and assignment requirements. You can limit results by type of material, by date, by subject and by oldest, newest, and relevance, and Subjects (aspects of a broader topic).

2. Check the settings for scholarly material. This may read peer reviewed academic journal, or refereed journal. Check this so the only type of results returned are scholarly research articles.

Many library databases include a box that you can check to filter out the non-scholarly articles. While these tools are useful, they are not foolproof. It's a good idea to evaluate each individual article you use to make sure that it comes from a scholarly publication.

3. Sort the results by Date. The last 5 or 10 years will give the most current research. In some cases, like history, you may want to see what the reaction was in in the field in earlier research, other fields like medicine you might want the most current.

4. Identify and / or select subjects. A subject heading applies the most focus to the search, results are fewer but should be the most relevant. You usually click a link to all items on a subject, or search for a subject from the search blanks at the top. You can also use the subject as additional keywords you can add.

5. Sort Relevance. At the top of the list there is usually also control for sorting the list by oldest, newest, or relevance. If the top results seem off, you can sort the list by switching to relevance to get items aligned with your topic appear closer to the top.

6. Search and review results. After adding the settings do the search and review the results.

Save

Figure out what to save
1. Read the titles. If your terms are bolded in the title, it is probably useful. When you find an article title that seems to fit, click to open the detailed record.

2. Read the abstract. This will summarize the research explain the purpose and tell who was involved and what happened.

3. Get the Full text of the article. You should see a link to download the full text if its available and tools or link to save the citation. This will often be under the title on the result list, or inside the detailed record of the title where the abstract is.

4. Get the citation.  Also in the detailed record, you will find the article citation. There is usually a tool on the side or top of the screen. After you open the citation tool, find the citation for the subject you are studying. For example, APA for psychology, or MLA for English. Paste the citation into a document or email it to yourself!

Books can contain summaries of research on a particular topic, such as Roger Biles' Illinois: A History of the Land and its People, or personal narratives of events, such as Reminiscences of the Civil War by a group of men from the 103rd Illinois Infantry. Books can be found using Library online catalogs, such as WestCat and I-Share, or union catalogs such as WorldCat, an index to books, maps and other resources owned by libraries throughout the World. When searching WestCat, I-Share and WorldCat, the subject heading for Illinois History is:

Illinois--History

This phrase can be copied into a Subject Search in WestCat. Searches can be narrowed further if needed by browsing through related subjects for an appropriate subject heading.

Here are some other tips for making the most of your search.

1. Use AND to combine keywords and phrases when searching databases for journal articles.
2. Use truncation (an asterisk) and wildcards (usually a question mark or exclamation point).
3. Find out if the database you're using has a "subject search" option.
4. Don't limit yourself to just one database or one set of search results.
5. Choose whether you want to do a general “keyword” search, or be more specific by searching by title, author, or subject.

The library is a multi-leveled spiral rising up 5 floors above the ground. On each floor you will find specific resources and services that form the library information experience.

1st Floor - Vending machines, Media Room 180, Digital Commons

2nd Floor (Ground level) - Circulation, LCC2 Classroom, Reference Desk and Reference collection, Multimedia Development Room, Interlibrary Loan

3rd Floor - LCC3 Classroom, Print periodicals, magazines, journals, newspapers, (in alphbetical order)

4th Floor - Government documents, Book Collection

5th Floor - Book Collection

6th floor- Archives and Special Collections, Book Collection

It can be useful to sort your results as you go, here are some tips.

• Put terms together by adding each idea to a blank.
• When you put terms together notice the AND between the blanks, this sorts the results so terms in all the blanks should appear.
• Often you can tell a search worked by the title, if your terms are bolded in the title it is probably useful.
• If the results seem to be way off, check at the top of the list and make sure the results are sorted by relevance.
• Sort the results by Date, the last five or 10 years will give the most current research. In some cases, like history, you may want to see what the reaction was in in the field in earlier research.