Social Justice News
Gender Watch
A full text database of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas.
Ethnic NewsWatch
A comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
Follow an Issue
CQ Global Researcher
CQ Researcher offers in-depth, non-biased coverage of political and social issues, with regular reports on topics in health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the U.S. economy.
- See this article on the Looming Water Crisis. To get two perspectives on the story, check out the Pro/Con section.
Websites
Scholarly Articles
Key Communication Databases
Communication and Mass Media Complete Offers cover-to-cover (core) indexing and abstracts for over 300 journals.
Communication Abstracts Abstracts articles from journals, conference proceedings and hard-to-find documents. Includes scientific research and government policies.
ComAbstracts From the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, this is a database of the abstracts of primary literature for communication studies.
Article Database Search Tips
- Use synonyms, brainstorm and mine found resources
- Notice controlled vocabulary, index, descriptor and subject terms. Take good notes!
- Use truncation to search for all terms with the same root: child* for child, children and childhood
- Combine terms with boolean operators, AND contains both terms, OR contains at least one term
- Search phrases; quotes work for most databases
- Use dropdown menu or radio buttons to limit search to fields such as title, subject, abstract, descriptors
- Save time and frustration with the Help menu: every database has one!
Finding Articles in Full Text 
Once you have identified a useful article, check to see whether it is available in full text from that database. You will see a link or an icon for an HTML or PDF version of the article (sometimes the full article is displayed below the abstract). If the article is not available in full text through that database, it may still be available through another vendor. Click the find it button to see if it is available. This will take you to the 360Link screen:
Library Books & Videos
In addition to scholarly articles, books are another important avenue for scholarly publishing. You may also want to find a DVD to supplement your presentation.
From the library homepage, click the Search tab. Then click the Books & More tab. Search with keywords, or use the drop-down menu to search for a specific title or author.
See the results of an example search for recent books (past decade) on social justice and water issues.
Or, if you are looking for a video. Use the links on the right-hand side of the page to narrow the Format to DVD. For instance, here are videos concerning water supply that the library owns.
Citations
APA Style
Publication manual for the American Psychological Association
- Available for use in the library, this is the official guide to APA style.
OWL (Purdue University Online Writing Lab) - APA
- OWL is a freely available online resource provided by Purdue University. The OWL gives clear instructions for formatting your paper and bibliography in APA style.
Research and Documentation Online
- Includes a page specific to doing research in Communication studies.