Office Hours: by appointment or Skype me: lynn.jones1000
Office Location: 212 Doe Library
Contact Info:
510 768-7643
About this Guide
A guide to research and using the Library for Tracy McMullen's GWS R1B class.
The Research Process
1. State your problem as a question as succinctly as possible.
2. 'Brain dump': Write down what you already know about your topic, including
Names of people, organizations, companies, time period you are interested in, places of interest [countries, regions, cities], conceptual terms...
3. Decide what disciplinary methodologies you plan to use: e.g., sociology, political science, literature, psychology...
4. Fill in the gaps in your knowlege: get background information from specialized encyclopedias or other secondary sources. Wikipedia can sometimes be good here, or Google News.
5. Select the best places/ databases to find information on your topic from the Library'slist of databases by subject. Or use a catalog like Oskicat or Melvyl to search for books and other resources.
6. Use nouns from your brain dump as search terms.
7. Evaluate what you find. Change search terms to get closer to what you really want.
8. Refine Your Search Words - Using the information you have gathered, determine if your research words should be narrower or broader. You may need to search basic resources again using your new, focused topics and keywords.
Off-campus Access to Library Resources
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.
The Craft of Research [book]
This classic book on writing a college research paper is easily skimmed or deep enough for the truly obsessed researcher, explains the whole research process from initial questioning, through making an argument, all the way to effectively writing your paper.
This link is to the Google Books preview. But buy a secondhand copy for yourself. It's worth the $8 bucks.
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.
Research Advisory Service
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.
SMS and QR Codes in OskiCat
You can now text yourself a call number or use a QR code reader to find the location of an item in the UCB Library. Just click on a title in your OskiCat search results, and both options will be displayed on the right.
Ask a Librarian 24/7 Chat
Javascript required to chat
You do allow embedded content.
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!
Music databases
Music Index Indexes over 650 international music journals and magazines covering every aspect of the classical and popular world of music including historiographic, ethnographic, and theoretical topics. Included are book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries.
International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP) Indexes over 350 international music periodicals from over 20 countries, and also indexes feature music articles and obituaries appearing in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Covers nearly all aspects of the world of music, from scholarly studies to the latest crazes.
International Index to Performing Arts (IIPA) Indexes over 200 scholarly and popular performing arts periodicals, documents, biographical profiles, conference papers, obituaries, interviews, discographies, and reviews. Covers a broad spectrum of the arts and entertainment industry including dance, film, television, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, broadcast arts, circus performance, comedy, storytelling, opera, pantomime, puppetry, magic and more.
RILM (Abstracts of Music Literature) Indexes journals, books, bibliographies, catalogues, dissertations, Festschriften, films and videos, iconographies, critical commentaries, ethnographic recordings, and conference proceedings in the field of music, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, instruments, voice, performance practice and notation, theory and analysis, pedagogy, liturgy, criticism, dance, and music therapy. Items are included in the database from other fields as they relate to music, such as literature, dramatic arts, visual arts, acoustics, aesthetics, linguistics, mathematics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and physics. RILM has international coverage, with records in over 200 languages. Platform change: All NISC databases have switched to the EBSCOhost interface.
RIPM: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals and Online Archive Indexes selected 19th century music journals published in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the US. Offers a cumulative index to chronologies and authors appearing in over 65 volumes of the print version.
Platform change: All NISC databases have switched to the EBSCOhost interface.
Searching Library Catalogs
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.
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
Where's the PDF?
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.)
Gender and Queer Theory
GenderWatch Includes magazines, academic journals, newspapers, newsletters, books, pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government reports that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas.
LGBT Life Indexes more than 120 Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender (GLBT)-specific core periodicals and over 200 GLBT-specific core books and reference works. The product also contains data mined from over 40 priority periodicals and over 1,400 select titles. Also provides references to grey literature, newsletters, case studies, speeches, etc. Disciplines covered include civil liberties, culture, employment, family, history, politics, psychology, religion, sociology and more.
Women's Studies International Indexes books, journals, magazines, and other resources related to research and commentary on women and women's issues, feminism, and gender.
Contemporary Women's Issues Indexes a wide range of journals, hard-to-find newsletters, reports, pamphlets, fact sheets, and guides covering a broad array of gender-related issues such as violence, economic development, health, the military, education, human rights, and law. Covers sources published by organizations around the world.
Sociological Abstracts Indexes over 1,900 journals, books, dissertations, and reviews in the social sciences on sociological topics as well as selected anthropology, criminology, demography, law, social psychology, and urban development.
Project MUSE articles from 250 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences.
ArticleFirst articles from 11,000 popular magazines and scholarly journals
JSTOR Includes over 1000 scholarly journals - scholarly -- not current
Formatting Citations
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.
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.
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with 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.
RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
It's always good to double check the formatting -- sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
Is it a scholarly source?
Your instructor wants you to use scholarly [or 'peer reviewed'] sources. What does she mean?
Authoritative- written by a recognized expert in the field. How do you know? The PhD is one sign; employment by a university is another.
Peer reviewed- before publishing, the article was vetted by other scholars in the field. How do you know? Try searching the journal title in Google and read the publisher's blurb.
Audience- written for scholars and experts in the field. How do you know? The level of the language is usually a give away. It will be technical and formal.
Includes a bibliography and/or footnotes with citations of sources used.
Scholarship is always changing. Try to find the most recent scholarly sources you can.
Has been cited by other scholars. This can take time, so the newest articles might not be heavily cited yet. How do you know? Try searching the article citation in Google Scholar, which indicates the number of citations in Google Scholar [not comprehensive however]
Proves the point with sufficient evidence, rather than opinion statements.
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.
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.
