Library Research Guides
In addition to your instructor's website, you may also find the following guides helpful for library-based research:
Your bookmarks - access them from anywhere
If you work from multiple computers and find that you could benefit from being able to access your bookmarked webpages from anywhere, you may want to consider using del.icio.us or another social bookmarking tool.
Course Instructor
- Ron Doel
- Contact Info:
Instructor's Website
Searching the catalogs
If you know what you're looking for you can search by title or author.
More often, you'll likely be looking for books (or other catalogued materials) on your topic.
In this case you can search by keyword or subject heading. Keyword searching lets you search for a string of words or phrases on your topic (in any order) and lets you combine words with operators (OR, AND, NOT, etc).
Subject searching uses Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and provides a much more focused search.
Some examples of subject headings you may find useful for this class:
- Cartography - America
- Cartography - United States
- Cartography - Oregon
- Historical Geography
- Historical Geography - United States
- Historical Geography - Oregon
- Landscape Changes(s) - United States
- Landforms - United States
- United States - Historical Geography
- [state name] - Historical Geography
If you are looking for maps specifically, try adding "-maps" at the end of the subject heading.
In addition to searching by subject headings, review the subject headings in the records for books that look promising. This will give you more ideas for continuing your search.
Research Databases
Recommended geography databases
Geobase
The primary geography database. Also covers ecology and geology
1980-present
GeoRef
Geology (primarily) and geography coverage. GeoRef covers "geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses". 1785-present
For a comprehensive list of subjects covered, click here .
Recommended history databases
America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts
These two databases complement each other. AHL covers American history and HA covers world history (not US and Canada).
Other databases
Depending on your topic you may wish to consult other databases that address your subject area more directly. To find the databases that are suggested for a different subject area (such as Forestry):
- Go to the library's databases page
- Choose your area of interest in the "Select by Subject" dropdown menu
- This gives you a list of databases that address your subject along with general studies databases.
Moving from article citations to content
Once you have found articles in a research database your next step is to determine how to get a hold of the articles in the easiest possible way.
Using the citation information for the article, search for the title of the journal (not the title of the article) in ejournal list and the library catalog.
Ejournals connects you to online content (notice the dates of coverage)
The catalog shows you our print holdings (and usually the electronic copy as well)
What if the library doesn't own a journal I need?
If OSU Libraries does not own the journal you need access to, you can request articles through Interlibrary Loan.
Interlibrary loan (ILL) can be fast or slow - it depends on which library supplies the article and the method of delivery. Start your research early if you plan to use the service.
Learn more about interlibrary loan here .
Last Update: 31 Mar 14:57
