Finding Books

Library Catalog

The Library Catalog will be a copious source of information chiefly in our book and government document collection. Often a good approach is to do a keyword search on natural language terms, e.g. multicultur? and communicat?   Use of the ? symbol in this case will retrieve multicultural, multiculturalism, multiculturalist, etc. Other hints:

• Use quotation marks for exact phrase searches, e.g., “Arab American.“  
  
   
• Particular television programs, films or directors may have entries in the catalog as well; search for programs or films by title and as subjects, e.g. Simpsons (Television Program).
  
   
• Search directors in the format Lastname, Firstname as subjects or authors. 
  
   
• Take a good look at the records that you find and select subject headings from them for further research.

WorldCat

To widen your search, use a similar strategy in WorldCat, or other library catalogs.

Contact Information

Frank Lepkowski

238 Kresge Library

Oakland University

248-370-2497

lepkowsk@oakland.edu

Finding Articles

WilsonSelectPlus 

Multidisciplinary database with 100% full-text articles, popular and scholarly sources.

Some other FirstSearch databases of interest include

Reader’s Guide Abstracts

Social Science Abstracts

Humanities Abstracts

Art Abstracts

Electronic journal collections with excellent search engines that would be appropriate include JSTOR and Project Muse.

Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe

For journalistic coverage and reviews of films and TV shows and other media topics.

Sociological Abstracts

The single most extensive database to the literature of sociology and as such has much information about different ethnic and cultural groups.

General Library Information

Interlibrary Loans via ILLIAD

Floor map of Kresge Library