Start at the Rutgers
Libraries homepage. Click on Indexes. You will find Proquest,
Uncover, Jstor and many others in the alphabetical list of Indexes.
To find Vale, you should first click on "Social Sciences and Law."
There are many other indexes as well, although none that I can see specifically
focused on criminal justice or communications (although they have communications
as a category, the indexes are general social science indexes). Look
for indexes that seem promising for your purposes. These databases
mainly cover magazine and journal articles, although some other resources
are also included. Some are "full text," which means that some of
the articles listed can be accessed and printed out directly. For
others, you have to go to IRIS
to find if Rutgers carries the journal. Some of them are available
online, some are on the shelf, some can be ordered from New Brunswick or
Newark. For this exercise, however, you do not need to find the articles,
just get the citations. Later, however, you will be asked to collect
the three best articles on your topic, so you may find it convenient
to print them out now. You want articles that have useful information
to share with the class about your topic.
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Find VALE and do a search for "all databases" for some keywords related to your research topic. You may have to experiment with your keywords, but you should find some articles of at least some relevance. Choose one that appears to have some relevance and click on "Save". Then click on "Display" and print it out. Note: Vale sometimes comes in very slowly; try doing this at an off hour if you can. I cut the assignment to one article because it is so slow. It does have a lot of material. |
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Click on Proquest, and once you are logged in, Continue. Then search for relevant keywords, as before. Find at least one article that appears relevant to your research topic and put a check by it on the left. Then click on "Marked List." Print out the first page of the article. This tends to have a lot of relatively light, journalistic articles. You should use these for your report only if nothing more substantive is available. |
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Click on Uncover, then Search Uncover, then Search Uncover Now (you do not need to file out a profile). Search as before and find two citations of relevant articles. Print out the page for each. This is a very useful index, but it does not provide online texts. You can go to IRIS to see if the Rutgers library has the articles you find. |
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Find the full-text database called JSTOR. This offers full copy printouts of articles, in either HTML or Adobe Acrobat format. It tends to work quickly, in my experience. You have to indicate which categories of journals you want to search. You will probably get the best results if you search journals in sociology and political science. Search as before and print out at least three citations of relevant articles. |
To hand in your exercise, prepare a cover page (hand printed
is ok) that gives your name and the subject of your research project.
Staple the printouts together and hand them in to your Teaching Assistant.
If you are working in a group, you can do two each, but they all have to
be stapled together with a common cover sheet.
This was adapted by Ted Goertzel from an exercise prepared by:
Robert E. Wood
Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal
Justice
Rutgers University, Camden
wood@camden.rutgers.edu
http://camden-www.rutgers.edu/~wood/