Getting Help
Hello, I'm Mou Chakraborty, Director of Public Services at the
Blackwell Library. I supervise the Research & Instructional
Services (RIS) Department
and the Access Services Department. What it means for you is
that I am your contact person for your instructional needs at
the Blackwell Library.
For
Distance Students
I also coordinate distance library services. So if you are a
distance student, please feel free to contact me. Sometimes as a distance
student you may feel a little isolated from the main campus. Rest assured,
we want to make sure that you are getting equitable level of library services
from us. You are also going to find this
Distance Learners page a very useful starting point.
You can call me at
410-543-6131 or email me at
mxchakraborty@salisbury.edu
Other Contacts in the Library
-
You can call the
Research & Instructional Services Desk at
1-888-543-0148 (ask for Blackwell Library Research Help Desk) or
directly at 410-548-5988
-
You can do
chat
with:
-
You can also get help 24
hours a day, 7 days a week through the Maryland AskUsNow
reference service. Find out more about that
here.
I'd highly encourage
you to also go through the
Library Tutorial as it will answer many of the questions you have.
If
you're new to the library website, here's a
quick tutorial to show you how to get around!
Assignments
For this course you will have two library
related assignments:
-
Research Log- you will be
given a log in class and it will also be posted on MyClasses.
-
Website Evaluation - Here's
the
criteria
that you will use for to evaluate your selected website from the list. A
list of websites and the exercise worksheet will be distributed in
class.
If you have any questions about these
assignments, please contact Mou directly.
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
comparison table handout.
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. NOTE: If you
are off campus, you will need to log in with the barcode from
the BACK of your Gull Card to access the databases.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY & NEWSPAPERS:
-
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
-
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:
-
Social Work Abstracts
- our main database for Social
Work.
-
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.
-
PsycINFO - the gold standard database
for psychology and related fields.
-
PsycArticles- includes full text articles
from 71 journals in 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
Find It Button
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.
Watch this
video tutorial for more information about ILL.
The Find It button is YOUR
FRIEND!!! See it in action in this
tutorial!
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!
Everybody's Favorite: Statistics!
You can also try your hand at finding
datasets by Googling "public use" AND dataset AND [your topic].
Statistics can be tricky, so be sure and let me know if you're
having problems finding what you want!
Citing your work
Plagriarism is not cool. 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.
Use
this guide to help you cite your work, and remember
librarians are good at answering citation questions as well!
Here are some of my favorite
sites for help with APA Style:
