ENGL 1050: Thought and Writing Guide

Overview

The library has many resources that can help you with your
assignments for this and other classes. You can Ask a Librarian via e-mail, IM,
phone or in person.

College-Level Research

University-level information research requires that you define the kind of information you need, decide where and how to look for it, evaluate what you find, select what is useful and cite it appropriately in your own work.

Finding Books

Using the search box under the Catalog tab on the WMU Library home page, search the Library Catalog to locate books owned by our libraries. If we do not have a book, you can borrow it from another library through Interlibrary Loan, though you must register first. Or borrow from a Michigan library through MeLCat.

New Library Catalog In 2009 we added a new interface to our catalog. It still identifies books (including online books), journal titles, government documents, music, videos, maps, and other items in the University Libraries. It can still be searched by title, author, subject, but now you can choose the format and location in your first search. There are easy ways of narrowing your search in the left column, it offers "did you mean" spelling, favorite lists, and lets you tag items with your own labels.

Classic Library Catalog WMU's Classic library catalog (also known as WestCat), is used to identify books (including online books), government documents, journals, audio and video, slides and other items in the University Libraries' collections. The catalog can be searched by title, author, subject heading, keyword, call number, and more.

Finding Articles

To find an article, you first need to search an article database. Under the Articles tab on the home page you can search Proquest Research Library, a good general index or find others under the More databases by subject link. Here are a few useful article databases:

ProQuest Research Library Indexes popular magazines, scholarly journals, newspapers and trade publications in a wide range of subject areas, including business, education, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Full-text available for over 2,500 journals. Coverage from 1971.

Academic OneFile Academic Onefile from InfoTrac contains full text articles from several thousand peer reviewed journals which cover a wide range of subjects including the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In addition it contains several hundred audio files and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and CBC. It also contains a number of national and international newspapers. Updated daily.

CQ Researcher Explores a current news issue in-depth each week. Articles typically include an overview and background of the issue, pro-con essays on a question in the issue, a chronology, and lengthy bibliography. Coverage from October 1991 to present.
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ERIC
The Educational Resources Information Center indexes and abstracts over 2,000 journals and more than 450,000 reports in education and related fields. Some documents are available full text, the rest are on microfiche in the Education Library. Covers 1966-present. Updated monthly.
This is the FirstSearch version, also available from CSA and from the US government. Tutorial

Finding Journals in the Library

To find journals owned by the WMU libraries, go to the Journals tab on the library home page and enter the title of your journal. This will lead you to a list, choose the most accurate title from the list, and it will let you know where we have this journal full text online (if we have it) or if we have it in print. If we don't have the issue you need, there will be a link to Interlibrary Loan.

Evaluating Web Sites

There is a difference between the materials you can get from the general Web by searching Google, and the resources that are purchased by the University Libraries, but are provided to you through the Web. Quality general Web sites can be found in our Subject Guides and Quick Answers.

Module 5 of Searchpath explains how to use and evaluate the Web.

Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages Provides guidance for evaluating the quality of Web information.

Citing Sources

Instructors usually require that one of the writing style guides is used when writing papers at WMU. The books are available at reference desks in all of Western's Libraries.

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
LB 2369 .G53 2009 (Ref Desk Collection)
One of the frequently used style guides for writers of term papers and scholarly articles and books in the literary field. Includes sections on citing electronic publications, and provides guidance in footnote and bibliographic conventions, quotations, manuscript submission, thesis and dissertation writing, etc. Intended primarily for high school and undergraduate college students. For the most commonly cited materials see our MLA Style guide. This style is used for research papers in the English department.

Chicago Manual of Style
Z 253 .C57 15th 2003 (Ref Desk Collection)
A detailed and comprehensive guide for papers, articles, theses, dissertations, and books. It is the "Bible" for many publication guidelines. Kate Turabian

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
BF 76.7 .P83 2001 (Ref Desk Coll, Sci Ref, Educ Ref)
Now in its fifth edition, this manual provides detailed guidelines for citing sources in written manuscripts. Originally developed by the American Psychological Association, this style manual is used by many other disciplines besides psychology. For the most commonly cited materials see our APA Style guide.
For a comprehensive guide, see APA Formatting and Style Guide provided by Purdue University.

Ask A Librarian

Kate Langan
kathleen.langan@wmich.edu
269-387-5823
Last updated: August 2009