Tips for the Writing 2 Research Paper
Professor La France
Winter 2007

This website aims to help you with the library component of your Writing 2 research paper. Professor La France will provide details about topics for your papers. The following will help you begin your research using UCSB library resources.

DEVELOPING YOUR SEARCH STRATEGY

Before you start searching, you need to think about what you are looking for and how it might be described by someone else. For this class you are looking for information about how different religions approach and treat gender. What synonyms can you come up with for these terms?

If you want to look at how sexual orientation is viewed by evangelical Christians, you might come up with these terms:

(homosexual* OR gay OR lesbian OR transsexual* OR transgender*)
AND
(evangeli* OR fundamental*)
AND
christian*

There is a lot going on in this search. We connect similar terms with OR and then enclose these in parentheses to establish them as sets or concept clusters. Then we connect these parenthetical sets with AND to see where the concept clusters overlap. This is called searching with Boolean operators and can be done with many (but not all) of our databases.

The asterisk* used above in homosexual* is a truncation symbol. This means that the computer will search for words that start with the letters h-o-m-o-s-e-x-u-a-l (homosexual, homosexuals, homosexuality, etc). Most databases have a truncation symbol and most use the asterisk*.

Remember: if you are focusing your research on a particular religion, you should search using any variant names for the religion as well. For example, if you are researching the Church of Latter Day Saints, you will need to search: mormon* OR church of latter day saints.

FINDING BOOKS

• Go to the Advanced Search screen
• Do keyword searches
• Use OR between similar concepts in the same box

You can also use Melvyl (the library catalog for the entire University of California) if you don't find enough in Pegasus. But please note: it will take up to a week to get materials you find via Melvyl.

FINDING ARTICLES

Depending on your topic you might want to search one or more of the following indexes:

Expanded Academic ASAP

• Contains citations, abstracts and some full-text documents for major journals in most academic disciplines
• Also contains popular magazines (for example, Time, Sports Illustrated)
• Go to Advanced Search
• Do keyword searches
• Can use Boolean searching including parentheses
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

GLBT Life

• Has information Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered issues
• Go to advanced search
• Do keyword searches
• Connect the boxes with AND (in the drop-down menu)
• Use * to truncate
• Can limit to peer-reviewed when searching or when viewing results
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

GenderWatch

• Full-text database with articles addressing different issues related to Gender
• On entry page you have to click the red "continue" button to get to the search screen
• Go to Advanced search
• Change "Citation and document text" to Abstract so you aren't doing full-text searches
• Use * to truncate

Contemporary Women's Issues

• Has interesting limit features like Subject Area and Geo Region
• Contains a lot of full-text
• Use * to truncate

Ethnic NewsWatch

• Contains regional and ethnic newspapers
• Has a lot of full-text material
• Go to Advanced Search
• Search ABSTRACTS (change drop-down menu at the end of the line)
• Use * to truncate
• Can limit to ethnic group (example: Jewish)

America: History & Life

• Use keyword search box
• Can use Boolean searching including parentheses
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Sociological Abstracts

• Can use Boolean searching including parentheses
• Do keyword searches (change drop-down menu to KEYWORD for each line)
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

ATLA Religion

• Make sure you are doing keyword searches
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item