Welcome to Global Studies Research Guide
Welcome to the Research Guide for Global Studies 350 with Professor Washington. This guide is prepared for you by the Bowman Library. We welcome you to reach out to us for help using any of the resources in this guide or for help finding more resources for your research.
Best Resources
Finding Journal Articles
Often your professor will ask you to use scholarly articles, academic articles, or peer-reviewed articles. These are generally all the same thing. They are written by scholars who are experts in their fields and are usually tied to a college or university. They are great for:
- Credible and trustworthy information
- Recent findings and research topics in the field
- Research studies, tables, and data
- Bibliographies and reference lists.
- Academic Search Premier (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Provides searching of over 8,500 journals, including peer-reviewed, across a wide range of topics. coverage: 1975 to present - Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowProvides access to scholarly literature "across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations." Note that many articles contain only the citation and no full text; if full text is not available, you can order articles or books via Interlibrary Loan.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A full-text collection of more than 400 journals in business and the liberal arts, with especially strong coverage of business, finance, economics, history, regional studies, education, and sociology. (Our subscription includes the Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences IV, Business I, and Business II collections.) JSTOR is notable for the high quality of the journals it includes. The most recent three to five years of each journal are usually excluded from JSTOR, however.
- Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities Library This link opens in a new windowOver 1,400 journals featuring key research across 14 Social Sciences and Humanities subject areas. Subjects available in Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities Library include Education, Arts & Humanities, Business, Management & Economics, Psychology, Sociology & Related Disciplines, Sport, Leisure & Tourism, Politics, International Relations & Area Studies, Mental Health & Social Care, Media, Cultural & Communication Studies, etc.
Background Information
The following databases are good sources for background information about your topic.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Provides original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on current events, including summaries and bibliographies. Controversial topics are addressed in a balanced, unbiased manner in the Congressional Quarterly tradition.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text reference books in 20 subject areas. It includes over 180 titles and 65,000 images "powered by a network of cross-references that cut across topics, titles and publishers to provide answers - and new connections - in context." coverage: Varies
- Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive dictionary that also traces the development of English words from approximately 1150 AD up to the present day. Click on "Simple search" in the lower left corner of the database page to be able to search for words in the definitions, quotations, and more.
Search Tips
Bowman Library has a large variety of books and ebooks that are chosen for their relevance to the courses offered. You can access ebooks directly from the library website whether you are off or on campus. Books and ebooks are good for finding overviews and history of your topic. You don't need to read the whole book to get the information you need for your project; often one chapter of a scholarly book will cover the information you need.
Use Boolean operators:
Use AND in a search to:
- narrow your results
- tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
Use OR in a search to:
- connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms)
- broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
Use NOT in a search to:
- exclude words from your search
- narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
Don't forget about filtering your search results ! Filters in the catalog are located on the left side. You can narrow your search results to format type (ex. books only), specific years, and more.
The location of filters in each database varies, but look at the sides of the database you are searching for filtering options. Filters help narrow your results and increase the relevancy of your results.
Use the catalog search above to find eBooks about these theorists. A selection of eBooks is listed here:
- Edward Said
- Gayatri Spivak
- Franz Fanon
- Kazuo Ishiguro
- Arundhati Roy
You can also search in Credo for information about these theorists.
- Financial Times (via ABI/INFORM) This link opens in a new window
The Financial Times is read daily by businesses, politicians, and academics around the world. The FT covers a variety of topics, including management, business, the legal industry, politics, climate change, and economics, all from a global perspective.
While we no longer have a direct subscription to ft.com, we have access to content published from 05/31/1996 to present (with a 30 Day delay) through ABI/Inform. - Newspaper Source (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowProvides complete coverage of more than 40 national and international newspapers, along with selective full text from over 370 regional U.S. newspapers. Also includes television and radio transcripts.
- New York Times (NYTimes.com) This link opens in a new windowActivate your subscription from one of the links below and make sure you use the off campus activation link if you are off campus and the on campus activation link if you are on campus. After creating your account, you can log on to the New York Times site directly using your Menlo e-mail and the password you have set up. iPhone, iPad, and Android apps are available with your login. The Menlo Community has full-text access to the New York Times from 1851 to the present. For the years 1923-1980 there is a limit of 5 articles per day per user.
Find Information at Bowman
Searching the catalog doesn't find everything we have! Check out the tabs below to search for more specific types of information.