Afro American Studies  Tags: afro_american african_american black_studies  

Question:
How do you efficiently find good journal and magazine articles on your chosen topic?
Answer:
Use the right database!

TIPS

• After you've run a search, use the button (if the database has it) to retrieve articles.

• Use the Database Searching Log to keep track of your searches and search strategies in different databases.

Try these:

Academic Search Premier (includes full-text journal articles) - Good for scholarly journal articles. Tip: For scholarly articles, limit the search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals in the front search screen

African American Biographical Database

America: History and Life - Scholarly article citations in American history with some full-text links.

Biography Resource Center - Biographies of thousands of important people.

Black Studies Center - Combines several resources for research in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, and the Black Literature Index. IIBP provided indexing and abstracting of 150 African, American and Caribbean periodicals, with full text of forty core journals. The Chicago Defender was at one point the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.

Book Review Digest - Great for book reviews.

ERIC - Articles and reports dealing with issues in education.

Ethnic Newswatch - Full-text articles from the newspapers, magazines and some scholarly journals of ethnic communities in the United States.

Google Scholar - The same Google interface most people are familiar with -- but it searches only scholarly, academic information, rather than the whole Web. From the library website, Google Scholar is connected to our online journals and our Interlibrary Loan service, so you will not need to pay for articles as you might outside the library website.

JSTOR - Full-text scholarly articles in many fields.

Lexis-Nexis - News section contains hundreds of newspapers from all over the world. Most of the articles are not scholarly. Contains contemporary book reviews in news sources (full text).

MLA International Bibliography - For literature research (authors criticism, fiction criticism, poetry criticism)

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Sociological Abstracts - Scholarly article citations in sociology with some full-text links.

SEARCH TIPS

Search for books in the Library Catalog, linked at www.library.umass.edu.

• When searching for information about a person, search with the last name first.
• Best to be as specific as possible (e.g. Holiday, Billie). Best to write out full name if you have an acronym (e.g. National Basketball Association instead of NBA).
• Use broad categories to browse for sub-topics or to limit (by date, words in subject or words in title) for more focussed results.
• Subject searches are often more focused than keyword searches. But when a subject search doesn't work, try a keyword search.
• If our copy is out or if UMass doesn't have enough books on your topic, check the Five Colleges Catalog.You can connect to the Five College Catalog directly from our catalog and request Five College books online!

Sample subject searches (based on actual topics of students between 2003-2007)

African American athletes

African American basketball players

Athletes, Black

Black Power

Black Power - United States

Baraka, Imamu Amiri

Capital punishment

Discrimination in capital punishment

Discrimination in criminal justice administration

Family Violence

Family Violence - Cross Cultural Studies

Genocide

Hip-Hop

Jazz

Jazz musicians

Lee, Spike

National Basketball Association - History

Slaves' Writings, American

Marsalis, Wynton

Winfrey, Oprah

Also try: Net Library - for online books

If UMass doesn't have books on your topic, or if our copy is checked out:

Five Colleges Library Catalog

WorldCat and Other Library Catalogs for searching other catalogs if you don't find books in the Five College System.

You may borrow books from other libraries using Interlibrary Loan.

Put all your references in RefWorks, create quick and easy bibliographies, build your knowledgebase.

1. Set up your account by clicking on the RefWorks link on the library homepage. From the RefWorks info page, choose "RefWorks Login & New Account Set up." From the login page, choose "New to RefWorks? - Sign up for an Individual Account." Note: You get to choose your own username and password - make them easy to remember!

2. Get your book citations into RefWorks

Books from the UMass Catalog

1. Within RefWorks, go to the search menu on the left side top and choose "Online Catalog or database"
2. In the next screen, under "Online Catalog or Database to Search" choose "University of Massachusetts Amherst." If you have a specific title or author, go to the advanced search at the bottom and run your search.
3. Your results will appear in a separate window or tab. choose the title(s) you want to import to your RefWorks account and click on "Import."

3. Get your journal article citations into RefWorks
Most databases have a way to export citations into RefWorks directly.

If you need more help or info on RefWorks, check out the FAQs.

Journals (for browsing and searching).

The following are some top scholarly, academic journals. These provide good examples of how "real scholars" write.

African American Review Per PS173 .N4 N36 and online through JSTOR and Expanded Academic Index.

Callaloo Per PS173.N4 C3 and online through JSTOR and Project Muse

Black Issues in Higher Education Per LC2781 .B455 and online.

Journal of Black Studies Per E185.5 .J8 and online through JSTOR

Journal of Blacks in Higher Education Per LC2781 .J68 and online through JSTOR

Souls: a Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society Per E185.5 .S68 and online.