Cabrillo College Library

What's on this page

Local resources

Periodicals and Newspapers

Find Web pages on your own

eBooks

Citations

Blogs

Insert an image

Share your thoughts!


your name_____________________________

To get to this page   

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Internet Links
  3. Click on English
  4. Scroll down, and under Course-Related Materials, select ENGL 1A, Marcy Alancraig
  5. The computers in the classroom have Internet Explorer. Add this page to the Favorites list. Click on Favorites at the top of your screen. You'll now be able to get back to this page easily by clicking on the word Favorites at the top of your screen.

Rules of the road 1.Using Word: you're welcome to open a Word document and take notes that way; or write on this sheet. 2. You are encouraged to email stuff to yourself, but you can also print for free while you are here with your class, up to about 25 to 30 pages per person.

LOCAL RESOURCES

Local newspapers -- look for Archives or Indexes to search for articles. Local newspapers are very important sources of information about regional issues. Remember that opinions about local issues also show up in letters to the editors and in editorials.

Local organizations

  • Want to identify local organizations, want to find people to contact or to interview? The Community Information Database at the Santa Cruz Public Libraries Web site is the place to go! It's amazing how many local organizations there are.
  • For Monterey County, try Monterey County Community Services and click on Nonprofit Organizations.
    Your notes:

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Local libraries -- It's good to visit libraries in person ; -) But you can also poke around online and find some surprising stuff!

NOTE: Many libraries have clipping files for local issues. Library staff clip local newspaper stories and collect brochures and other small publications about topics of concern to the locals. Explore Santa Cruz Clipping File Database for descriptions of the files available at the Central Library in Santa Cruz.

Your notes:

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Government -- Possible resources include archived reports; minutes of Council and other official meetings; press releases

There are also information sources such as Health Services Agency, County of Santa Cruz || SC Probation Department || SC City Police Department || Water Quality Reports, Santa Cruz County Health Services. Water Quality Monitoring in Santa Cruz County

Statistics
CLIKS Online Data provides regional profiles, graphs, maps and raw data on topics related to children. Want rates of teenage pregnancy by county -- that's here! Similar information at the state and national level is available at KidsCount.

Need other statistics? Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage and click on Internet Links, then Statistics.

Your notes:

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PERIODICALS Academic Search Premier provides access to information about articles published in approximately 8,000 periodicals (both magazines and journals); for about 4,000 of those periodicals, full text copies of the articles are in the database. 

 

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage 
    Click on Full Text Articles 
  2. On the next screen, under General, select Academic Search Premier. [If you are coming in from off campus, type in your library card number] 
  3. On the next screen, click on
  4. Click in the small box next to Full Text. This will limit your search to articles that are full text in the database
  5. Type in your search terms.  Then click on  SEARCH

OK -- you skimmed through all that pretty fast because yo think you know all about this tool. Maybe, maybe not. From my experience in working with students, here are some things some students miss out on remembering:

  1. Use Advanced search mode: You no doubt have more than one variable in mind
  2. Click in the little box next to Full text if you want to get only fulltext articles
  3. You can change the "Default Fields" box. Probably the most helpful thing to change it to is TX All Text, if you have a fairly complex topic or if you're not getting enough results.

    Look for some articles and make notes here about what you find:

    __________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________

    __________________________________________________
    NOTE that you can email these articles. Nifty!

    There are other online databases that will be useful to you. To get to these: from the Cabrillo College Library homepage, click on Full Text Articles.

NEWSPAPERS

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
  2. Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down, on right)
  3. Over on the right, under News, click on Proquest Newspapers for major U.S. newspapers from recent years.

Search for an article about your topic. What did you find?

Title of article______________________

Date of the New York Times____________

Note that you can email these articles. Very cool.


CQ Researcher is an important research tool for information on topics of current, public concern. Available via the Web, it is a constantly updated resource of information and analyses of current social problems. CQ Researcher will give you excellent context for focusing on and understanding the local problem on which you are focusing.

1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
2. Click on Fulltext Articles
3. Click on CQ Researcher [If you are coming in from off campus, type in your library card number to get access.]
CQ Researcher is a good source for background information on any topic that has a social or policy angle. Notice that you can email these reports. Check out one of the Pro/Con sections. Make notes about CQ Researcher here (write down what its strong features are that will be useful for your research). Your notes:

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FINDING WEB PAGES ON YOUR OWN

It's one thing to use Web sites that are recommended to you. It's another to go out and find good ones on your own. The Internet is an open publishing environment; anyone can publish (and, it seems, nearly everybody does!)

Evaluation is critical. It is important to keep basic criteria in mind: Authority. Accuracy. Objectivity. Currency. Coverage.
Some "tricks" to use in evaluating Web sites

1. Frequently, authors of Web pages include a date to indicate when the page was last updated. Look towards the bottom of the Web page to see if there's a date.

2. Examine the domain name carefully. Usually, but not always, domain names in the U.S. that end in .com are commercial, those that end in .gov are governmental, .edu is for educational institutions, and .org is for nonprofits and other organizations.

3. Frequently (but not always), a tilde (the symbol ~) prior to a file name indicates that it is someone's personal Web page. Some places on the Web are in the business of hosting personal Web pages. When a domain name has geocities, angelfire, tripod, or aol in it, the Web page is probably a personal one. (Not that every personal Web page is junk, but...)

4. If a site has a long file name, try taking off the last part of the URL to see the Web page or site to which it is hooked.

5. If you're curious as to who owns a Web site, go to whois.com and find out!

Using Google Since July 2007, Google now does what it calls universal searching -- it searches a variety of its databases and returns results alerting you where there is interesting stuff in more than one.

Here is the results of a Web search using Google -- but Google lets you know there are also books on the topic. Way cool.

Or, go to books.google.com directly to search inside of millions of books.

Using search engines to find local materials One clever way of searching is to use specific words to represent your topic, and then indicate that you want the materials from a particular Web site. For example, if you were looking for materials related to transportation that were on the City of Santa Cruz Web site, your search could look like this:


Domain names for local area cities:

    ci.salinas.ca.us
    ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
    ci.watsonville.ca.us
    www.monterey.org
    scottsvalley.org

Your notes:

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eBOOKS The library now has about 15,000 eBooks -- If you want to use eBooks from home, just type in your library card number. To search eBooks

Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage
Click on Full Text Articles (it's the second icon down on the left)
Under General, click on NetLibrary e-Books

Here, for example, is a search for homeless in Santa Cruz that retrieved 15 books!

Look to see whether there would be eBooks on your topic. The default search engine searches through the full text of the books! Did you find something? What?

Title______________________________________ Year____________

BLOGS Google has a BlogSearch that searches millions of blogs (Web logs -- people writing and sharing ideas on the Web). Searching blogs can be very useful to find information that is informally distributed. Here's a sample search:

INSERT AN IMAGE
The Web is rich in images -- not just pictures, but charts and graphs as well. You should feel very comfortable transferring an image from the Web to a Word document. Do this little exercise if you're a bit unsure.

First, find an image. Places to get images on the Web:

To insert an image into a Word document:

  1. From the START menu, bring up Word
  2. Right click on the image. Scroll down to Copy
  3. Go to your Word document. Position the cursor to where you want your image to be
  4. Paste the picture (File -> Paste, or use Ctl V)
  5. Under (or near) the image, type the word Source and include the title of the Web site and its URL.

    Your image is there. Word is not PhotoShop (an expensive software program for altering images) -- you can't really "doctor up" your image, but you can do some manipulations.

    You can write next to and below the image. To put text around the image -- click on the image, go to Format -> Picture. Click on Layout tab, and select the wrapping format you want. You can also, you'll note, change the size and do some other minor alterations

WRITING CITATIONS

Now that you have found all this wonderful stuff, how do you cite it? From the Cabrillo College Library homepage, click on Internet Links, then click on Style Guides.

Please share your thoughts about this session. Thanks!

To Get to This Page on the Internet

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage http://libwww.cabrillo.edu
  2. Click on Internet Links
  3. Click on English
  4. Under Course-Related Materials, click on ENGL 1A, College Composition, M. Alancraig

 

M. Alancraig, T. N. Smalley 10/07