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!

You can also get help 24 hours a day/7 days a week through the Maryland AskUsNow chat reference service: http://askusnow.info/

Background Information

Reference sources 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?
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!

Books from other USMAI Libraries
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.

Books from Interlibrary Loan/Worldcat
Interlibrary Loan is a great tool that allows you to borrow a book from libraries outside the USMAI system. Before you submit a request, make sure that we don't own the book here at SU or at one of the other USMAI institutions. If not, you can submit a request through ILL Express.

You can also search Worldcat, which is a huge catalog of materials from libraries all over the world. If the book you want is in a library, chances are pretty good you will find it in Worldcat!
If you find the book you want and you know it is not available at SU or any USMAI campus, then you can click the Find It button and then request the book through Interlibrary Loan. The advantage of doing it this way is that you don't have to fill in all the information about the book!

Click here to go to the Interlibrary Loan webpage.

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:

Academic Search Premier - 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
Lexis-Nexis Academic - this database contains full-text world news, legal and business information. Might be useful for finding movie reviews.
National Newspapers - a collection of full-text major newspapers including The New York Times and Washington Post. Might be useful for finding movie reviews.
ComAbstracts - citations to scholarly communication articles, the full-text articles in this database require downloading the Djvu reader.
Humanities International Complete - database covering the Humanities with quite a few Communications journals included.
JSTOR - scholarly full-text resources; the newest documents are 3-5 years old.

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!!!

You can also use the Citation Linker, another fabulously cool tool. It is useful when you are reading an article and it cites another article that looks like it would be super useful for your research. You plug in the citation information for that article and can find out how to access it, whether it be electronically, physically in the library, or through Interlibrary Loan. It works the same way as Find It, but you don't have to be in a database.

Learn more about the Citation Linker!

Evaluating 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 these MLA citation guides to help you cite your work, and remember librarians are good at answering citation questions as well!

SU's Brief MLA Guide: http://www.salisbury.edu/library/citation/index.html#mla
MLA Tutorial: http://support.library.ewu.edu/reference/tutorial/flash/citation.html
Comprehensive MLA Guide: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/

Subject Guide Home | Library Home

The library liaison to Communication is Krista Knapp,
kmknapp@salisbury.edu | 410-677-0118