Subject Guides>Communication & Media Studies>Comm 1100 Course Guide>Finding Information Sources
Communication Studies 1100 Course Guide
Finding Information Sources
Research and Assignment Help
The librarians will be happy to help you with your research. Just....
Research Basics
If you want a quick place to get started try the following:
- To find books or other media (including videos), Search Library Catalog.
- Looking for topic ideas? Try CQ Researcher
- To find journal, magazine, or newspaper articles use the Belmont Library databases at http://lib.belmont.edu/dbases.html. The "Multi-Subject Databases" are always a good place to start or you can choose one of the subject categories.
Constructing a Search Strategy
The words that you select when you are trying to find information about your topic are important. It is just as important when searching the Web as it is when searching the Libraries databases. The following steps and hints will help you find the information you need and save time and frustration in the process.
- Identify Keywords. The first step is to examine your specific purpose and decide what the main keywords are. If your specific purpose is "to inform my audience about the legalization of marijuana" your main keyword is marijuana and your aspect is legalization.
- Identify Synonyms. The second step is to identify synonyms of your keywords. This will increase the likelihood that you will find all of the relevant information about your topic. See the following table for an example of how you can structure the process of identifying synonyms for your topic. Don't forget to include alternative spellings. It is often helpful to include slang synonyms that are not likely to bring a lot of results. This will help you identify articles that you might not find with your original search terms. Dictionaries are very helpful if you are having trouble thinking of synonyms.
Use truncation when the ending of a word could vary. The symbol for truncation in ProQuest is an asterisk (*). By using "legali*" as a search term the database will return hits on words such as legalization, legalize, legalized, legalization , etc..
- Create Search Phrases.
Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and truncation to construct your search phrases.- Use AND to combine different keywords in order to narrow your results (ex: Cannabis AND legalization, pot AND support)
- Use OR to search for synonyms of your keyword and expand possible results (ex: Cannabis OR pot OR marijuana)
Marijuana |
Legalization (legali*) |
Cannabis |
Support |
Pot |
Decriminalization (decriminal*) |
You can create complex, yet very effective search phrases by using parentheses, for example: ((Cannabis OR pot OR marijuana) AND (legali* OR decriminal*)) In ProQuest this search would look like:
Searching a Database.
ProQuest is a Belmont Library database which contains articles on a wide variety of topics. It is a great place to start your search and a good database to use as an example of how to search a library database.
- Analyzing Results.
The first thing that you should do after hitting the"Search" button is to analyze the results. How many hits did you get? Do the titles sound like they match your topic? Are the articles in magazines, newspapers, or academic journals?
We received 1408 hits on the marijuana legalization topic; It would take too long to read all 1408 titles in search for the academic journal article that we want. One way to weed through these results quickly is to click on the "Scholarly Journals" link. This will narrow your results to 104.
Another way to analyze your results is by looking at the details of an article. What does the abstract (or article summary) say? What are subject links? When was the article written? Also, by clicking on the subject links you will be led to all the articles in that database with the same subject link.
Finding the articles. If the article is not available in full text within the database, click on 
to see if it is available 1) in another database or 2) in the library in print or on microfiche.