Hi, I'm Krista Knapp, your friendly reference/instructional librarian, and I'm here to help you!
You can email me at kmknapp@salisbury.edu or kristaknapp@gmail.com. Trust me, you WANT to be friends with a librarian. Not only are we extraordinarily cool, but we're here to help you with your research, and we actually enjoy doing it, as crazy as that sounds! Visit my website for more information about me: http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~kmknapp/

When I'm not teaching classes or rushing off to meetings, you can find me in my office in Blackwell Library 129 or at the research services desk. My hours on the desk are Mondays 10am-12pm, Tuesdays 6pm-10pm, Wednesdays 12pm-2pm, Thursdays 10am-12pm, and Fridays 8am-10am. Stop by and say hi!

Background information:

Reference books are a good place to start your research. What is a reference source? A reference source is something you consult for a specific piece of information, not something you read from cover to cover. Reference sources include encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, thesauri, atlases, almanacs, directories, etc. Blackwell Library's reference collection is located on the main floor. Consult the Library of Congress Classification outline to see the call number area for your topic.

Why can't I just use Wikipedia, you ask? Well, anybody and their brother can get on Wikipedia and write whatever they want, for starters! Plus, there are tons of more reliable, authoritative sources out there for you to use. And, I just can't resist sharing my favorite Colbert Report clip about the downfalls of Wikipedia. View it here (and please ignore the brief commercial at the beginning!):

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=72347

Finding books:

Find books in Blackwell Library using our online library catalog. Books in our library are arranged using Library of Congress Classification. The books you can check out are located on the second floor of the library. If you ever have trouble finding a book you want, PLEASE ask for help at the Research Desk!

You can also borrow books from any of the USMAI affiliations by selecting the "choose campus" link at the top of the catalog page and then selecting "USMAI All Campuses." When you find a book you want that is not in Blackwell, click the "request" button and use your ID number to login. You can have the book delivered to Blackwell within 3 or 4 days.

Finding articles:

Ask yourself if you need scholarly sources or popular sources for your assignment. Many times, your professor will insist on scholarly sources. What does that mean? Find out using this handy-dandy chart from Duke Libraries.

We have several databases you can use to search for journal, magazine, or newspaper articles. Some of them only give a citation to the article, and some have the full-text. Here is a list of databases you might want to try. WARNING: these links will only work from on campus. From off campus, access databases through Research Port.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY & NEWSPAPERS:

Academic Search Complete - a multidisciplinary database from EBSCO with a mix of scholarly and popular resources, a lot of full-text and Find It links when there is no full-text available
JSTOR - scholarly full-text resources; the newest documents are 3-5 years old.
Lexis-Nexis Academic - this database contains full-text world news, legal and business information.
National Newspapers - a collection of full-text major newspapers including The New York Times and Washington Post.

SUBJECT-SPECIFIC:

ERIC - "Education Resources Information Center," a database with full text education articles and ERIC documents as well as Find It links to non-full text resources.
Business Source Premier - company, industry, business information with the familiar EBSCO interface.
MLA Bibliography - covers literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, and the dramatic arts.
Literature Resource Center - includes literary criticism, biographies, and bibliographies.
America: History and Life - covers United States and Canadian history, both full text articles and citations for others with Find-It buttons.
PsycINFO - the gold standard database for psychology and related fields.
Social Sciences Abstracts - articles and citations for interdisciplinary fields such as addiction studies, anthropology, corrections, economics, gender studies, gerontology, minority studies, political sciences, psychology, sociology, and more
Humanities International - provides full text of hundreds of journals, books and other published sources in Humanities fields.

WHAT DOES THAT CUTE LITTLE FIND IT BUTTON DO, ANYWAY?

It's a bit like magic, really. The Find It button does three things:

Looks in all of our databases to see if the document you want is available full-text in another of our databases. If so, it links you to it!
Links you to the library catalog when we have the item you want in print or microform.
Links you to ILLiad (interlibrary loan) so you can borrow the item from another library if we don't have access electronically or in print.

The Find It button is YOUR FRIEND!!!

Websites

Always make sure that internet resources are appropriate for your project. Look at the criteria listed on this website: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
If you have questions about the appropriateness of a website, please check with your professor or a librarian.

Citing your work:

Of course you want to make sure you give proper credit to any source that you use to write your papers, whether you directly quote or paraphrase. This guide helps students understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it: http://www.salisbury.edu/library/plagiarism/student.html

Use this guide to help you cite your work, and remember librarians are good at answering citation questions as well!
http://www.salisbury.edu/library/citation/index.html