Cabrillo College Library

Rebecca Arnesty

Your textbook's Web site

What's here

1. Community resources

2. Books

3. Articles

4. Web pages
via directory

5. Web pages via Google

6. Evaluating

7. Making brochures

8. New stuff

9. How to get to this page on the Web

Getting to this page

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library home page <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Internet Links, then click on Medicine
  3. Scroll down to Course-Related Materials and click on HS 15, Human Sexuality, R. Arnesty
1. Find Community Health Resources

Most communities have a broad assortment of health resources and organizations available to the public. The challenge sometimes is knowing how to find them! For Santa Cruz county, there are a number of excellent sources of community health listings available:

  • Community Information Database -- Many health organizations and other listings, maintained by the Santa Cruz Public Library
  • HELPSCC -- Health and other listings for Santa Clara counties (if you click on Santa Cruz, you are directed to the Community Information Database at the public library, listed just above)
  • Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency -- Services provided directly by the county
  • Santa Cruz Sentinel -- Search the archives for articles about local health and social service providers
2. Find Books Using the Cabrillo Library Online Catalog
  1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Library Catalog
  3. Do a Basic Search -- the opening screen. Or use Subject or Advanced.

Search examples

"human sexuality"
sex and cultur*

Use quotation marks around words that MUST belong together in that order, e.g., "sexually transmitted"

Use an asterisk (*) to pick up all words beginning with your term: cultur* would pick up culture, cultures, cultural

Specialized encyclopedias, handbooks and statistical resources are often exceptional sources of information on a topic and a good place to start because they provide background information. Here are some specific titles to explore:

Surveys and Statistics

American Men and Women: Demographics of the Sexes, by the New Strategist editors; Location: ref HB1755.A3 A44 2000

Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, ed. by Melissa Hope Ditmore. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Location ref HQ 115.E53 2006

Portrait of Health in the United States, edited by Daniel Melnick, Beatrice Rouse. Location: ref RA407.3 .P67 2001

Statistical Handbook on the American Family, edited by Bruce A. Chadwick and Tim B. Heaton. Location: ref HQ536 .S727 1999

Social and Cross Cultural Issues

Cross-cultural Perspectives on Human Sexuality, by Sandra L. Caron. Location: ref HQ16 .C37 1998

Growing Up: A Cross-cultural Encyclopedia, by Gwen J. Broude. Location: ref HQ767.84 .B76 1995

Ethnic Relations: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia, by David Levinson. Location: ref GN496 .L48 1994

Health and Illness: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia, by David Levinson, Laura Gaccione Location: ref R733 .L477 1997

International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, edited by Robert T. Francoeur. Location: ref HQ21 .I68 1997

Pocket Guide to Cultural Assessment, by Elaine M. Geissler. Location: ref RT86.54 .G45 1998

Public Health

Encyclopedia of AIDS: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Scientific Record of the HIV Epidemic, edited by Raymond A. Smith. Location: ref RA644.A25 E5276 2001

Encyclopedia of Mental Health, by Ada P. Kahn, Jan Fawcett. Location: ref RC437 .K34

Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, by M. H. Ditmore. 2 vols. Location: ref HQ115.E53

Encyclopedia of Public Health, edited by Lester Breslow. Location: ref RA423 .E53 2002

Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence, edited by Kristine Krapp and Jeffrey Wilson. Location: ref RJ26 .G35 2005

Electronic books The library offers you an extraordinary collection of electronic books, currently numbering about 15,000. The easiest way to get access to them:

  1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down on left)
  3. Under General, click on NetLibrary E-Books

In class, we'll show a search using the Advanced mode for "sexual politics" as a keyword.

You can access these electronic books from off campus with your library card number

Electronic reference books The Library now offers a database that contains about 270 reference books of various sorts, which you can simultaneously search through one interface. To get to it:

  1. From the Cabrillo College Library homepage <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down on left)
  3. Under Encyclopedias/Background Information, click on Credo reference
3. Find Magazine and Journal Articles

The primary periodical databases available at the Cabrillo College Library are

  • Academic Search Premier -- a general database covering many different subject areas
  • CINAHL Plus with Full text -- basically a nursing, health, medical database
  • Medline --focuses on all aspects of medicine

How to get to them and use them

  • From the Cabrillo Library homepage <libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  • Click on Full Text Articles (second icon down on left)
  • The databases are listed in the center column under Health and Medicine. From off campus you need to enter your library barcode number to get access.

The databases are all from the same company. Once you know how to use one, you can use any. Here's a sample search for articles about vaccines for cervical cancer. By using the asterisk ( * ) the search is for vaccine or vaccines.

Medline is also available free online from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The search interface there is different, and the results list offers opportunities to get additional articles on the same topic in different ways.

  1. Go to Medline at PubMed -- www.pubmed.gov
  2. Click on Limits and select Links to free full text
  3. Type in your search terms and click Go

Here's a sample search.

Here's the beginning of the results list:

You click on the illustrated pages to get to the next screen

and over on the right is your link to full text and links to related articles.

If you find information about an article that is not available full text, ask at the Reference Desk for an interlibrary loan -- we'll find a library that has it and will get a photocopy for you. Sometimes this process that can take as long as two weeks, so it's good to plan ahead.

4. Use Search Tools to Find Web Pages

We all use Google as our primary search engine. It's the biggest, the most innovative, and the best. Really.

Google now performs what it calls a universal search. It will search several of its databases at one time. From now on, you don't just have to know you're using Google, you have to know where in Google you are. ; -)

This is a Google search on the Web, but Google is alerting me that there are also books on the topic. Sweet!

6. Evaluating Web sites

The Web is an open publishing environment. Anyone can publish, and sometimes it seems as though everyone does! It is very important to evaluate what you find. In searching the Web, you want to use resources that are not only current (if necessary) and relevant to your topic, but that are also based on reliable, believable information resources.

7. Making Brochures

The resources described above will guide you to good content to include in your brochure. If you want some assistance with the process of making the brochure, try these:

  • How to Make a Brochure Using Microsoft Word -- maybe your version of Word has a brochure maker
  • My Brochure Maker -- takes a while to load; walks you through the steps; you substitute your images and text for what is already there

    Microsoft offers a nifty tool called Publisher. If you have Office Suite software from Microsoft (i.e., Word, Excel, Access, etc.) you may already have Publisher on your computer. It's worth a check.     I called the Computer Technology Center (1400 building) here on campus and was told that the computers that have Vista on them have Publisher.

There are lots of places to get images on the Web. Here are two of the better collections:

More than you want to know about various new things

Digitized books

  • Google is digitizing millions of books. Many are available full text (but not all; there's currently a publisher's suit). The URL is books.google.com
  • Would Bill Gates like to be outdone by Google? ; -) So Microsoft is digitizing books. Those books are available at books.live.com Microsoft has a suite of search engines and databases that have the word live in them.

Digitized articles When you use the periodical databases to which the library subscribes (such as the nursing database shown above, CINAHL Plus) you know you are getting access to quality resources. However, there are now databases of digitized articles (articles are not always full text) out on the Web.

Worldcat --find your book or article at a library close to you

Do you have a slight distaste for writing citations? Let Worldcat do that work for you! Search for your book or article, then click on Cite this Item.

Okay: I can't resist. This has nothing to do with this class. But Google has just come out with these:

Google Mars || Google Moon || Google Sky

How to get to this page on the Web

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Internet Links (third icon down on left)
  3. Click on Health Science or Medicine
  4. Under Course-Related Materials (towards the bottom) click on HS 15, Human Sexuality, R. Arnesty

 

R. Arnesty; T. N. Smalley last rev. 2/08