Locating Books

Library Catalog
Used primarily to locate the books and government documents the library owns. Keep in mind that books tend to give a broad understanding of a topic and are better sources when trying to find the history of a topic.

Cannot be used to find articles in magazines or journals, only which magazines and journals the library owns. Use one of the databases listed below for locating articles.

MelCat, the Michigan Electronic Library Catalog, allows you to search public and academic libraries throughout the State of Michigan and request books and media. Items usually arrive in about a week. This resource is provided by the Michigan eLibrary (http://mel.org). You will be notified by email when your items arrive.

InterLibrary Loan also allows you to obtain materials not owned by the Olson LIbrary. Books, periodical articles,and other sources can be borrowed from other libraries. The average time to receive requested materials is 1-2 weeks and you will be notified by email when your items arrive.

Journal, Magazine, and Newspaper Articles - General/All Subjects

Academic OneFile
A database of more than 8,000 scholarly and general periodicals from all fields of study. Full text coverage varies widely from title to title.

Access World News
Access World News provides information and perspectives from over 600 U.S. and over 500 international news sources. You can search across all the content or on particular states, countries, or continents. Indexing is cover-to-cover and coverage extends for some titles back to the mid 1970s.

Humanities (Film, Literature, History, Art, Music, etc.)

Literature Resource Center – Full text access to three key resources--Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Dictionary of Literary Biography--along with over 300 journals, a variety of other important reference works, and selected Web sites. 1991 to present.

MLA International Bibliography – Journals, books, and other resources in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Also includes materials on film studies. 1926 to present.

Evaluating Information Found on the Web

Excellent information can be found on the open web; unfortunately, it's all too easy to find erroneous or biased information as well. Use our Evaluating Internet Sources: A Library Resource Guide to help you tell the difference.

Style Guides

MLA Style Guide
Examples of how to cite a variety of materials, including full text articles, according to MLA style.

Zotero
Zotero is a free extension to Mozilla Firefox. It stores citation information, and, with the use of Microsoft Word, will allow you to create citations as you write your paper and then create your works cited page at the end. You can download the extension at http://www.zotero.org/. The Olson Library provides a guide for the use of Zotero as well.

Microsoft Word
You can also store and format citations in Microsoft Word. Click here for instructions.

Need further assistance? Stop by the Olson Library Public Services Desk for assistance, or contact Mollie Freier.