Finding Education Journal Articles

Using databases from the MCCC library

Martin Crabtree

MCCC Library

Agenda• Periodicals & Scholarly Journals

• Electronic Searching Techniques– Keywords & Boolean Searching

• Electronic Databases at Mercer– Accessing the databases– Education databases available at Mercer

• Giving credit to the author

• Your turn to use thedatabases

Periodicals

• Periodicals include:– scholarly journals– newspapers– magazines

• Periodicals represent the bulk of published scholarly information.• The library has a number of periodicals available in

print, on microfilm, and especially via electronic databases.

• The library staff can help determine if a specific

periodical is available from the library.

So what makes a periodical scholarly?

The generic scholarly journal article

• Written for and by scholars in a particular field.

• Assumes you know the jargon of the discipline.

• Tends to be lengthy sometimes with charts and/or graphs (but rarely photographs).

• Has a bibliography

Strategies for Searching Electronic Databases

And The Web Too

Starting An Electronic SearchKeywords

• Keywords are used when searching databases.

• They are words that will likely appear within articles that are relevant to your search

• The search programming looks for only those articles that contain the keywords you supplied

Starting An Electronic SearchKeywords

• The first step in a good search is to Generate a list of keywords. For example:– Ozone– Layer– Depletion– Atmosphere– Hole

Starting An Electronic Search

Boolean Searching/Logic

• Boolean searching - Connecting keywords with the terms– and– not– or

• For example– eagles NOT football– (car or automobile) and exhaust

• More Terms = Fewer “Hits”

Searching More Than Just Keywords

Phrases & Truncations• To search for a phrase, use quotation

marks– “early childhood education”

• Truncations allow for searching related words all at once– The * is usually used. For example:

• “child*” would include: child, children, childhood, childproof, etc.

Searching Electronic Databasesbeyond just keyword

• Field limiters allow you to specify your search within different parameters:– Only full-text articles– Only peer reviewed/scholarly journal

publications– A date (or date range)– A specific periodical title (or source)

Databases Available at MCCC

Electronic DatabasesIn General

• Accessible at any computer on the MCCC/JKC campus network.

• Most are available off campus, need use a password.

• Can print/e-mail/download articles.

Accessing Databases Remotely

• You can access most of the databases from any computer with internet access.

• Use your student ID number (no dashes) and your last name to log into the databases. i.e.

• If you are already using an issued password and ID number, they are still valid too.

Remote Login Screen

Use your student ID number & last name Use your previously

issued User ID & password

Viewing the articles

• Not every article is available in full-text. • When full-text is not available, an

abstract (summary) is usually given.• Full-text articles may be one of two

formats, HTML and/or PDF.• Need Acrobat Reader to view PDF

articles.

Education Databases

• EBSCOhost - Academic Search Premier– Broadest of the databases covering everything

from science to the humanities. – Contains a number of scholarly journal articles

from the field of education

• Proquest Education Journals– A collection of just educational periodicals

• Links are also at Dr. Reynolds homepage:– http://www.mccc.edu/~reynoldm/

Added Education Resources

• NJ Core Curriculum Standards:

http://education.state.nj.us/njsdb/

• National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) - Early Childhood Program Standards: http://www.naeyc.org/academy/standards/

Using the information you find

...and giving credit where credit is due.

Using the Information You Find

• Always give credit to the author or creator of the information that you use.

• This includes not only the actual facts, conclusions, and ideas that an author presents but also the words that he/she has used.

Plagiarism can take many forms

• Plagiarism is the presenting of someone else’s intellectual work as your own.

• It may be done deliberately, but it may also be done without your realizing it.

• The copying, word for word, from a book or an article is the most blatant form of plagiarism.

Plagiarism when paraphrasing or writing a

summary• Incomplete paraphrasing or summarizing another’s work could cause plagiarizing without your realizing it.

• To prevent this, you should avoid: Using the original sentence structure. Simply substituting a few words here and

there. Using any of the author's key words or

unusual words.

• Let’s look at an example...

Good paraphrasing

• It takes some effort to do a good job of paraphrasing.

• One helpful method is to: 1. Read the original sentence

2. Without looking at the sentence, try writing the idea of the sentence in your own words

3. Look back at the original sentence again to see it you haven’t used too much of the original language

-Adapted from “Avoiding Plagiarism”, at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia webpage: http://www.usip.edu/writing/plagrsm.shtml

Now it your turn to give it a try. Start by going to:

http://www.mccc.edu/~reynoldm/or

http://www.mccc.edu/student_library_online.shtml