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COM520 - Ott

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Welcome to the Course Guide for COM520: Applied Mass Communication Research

Start Here with Our Top Communications/Journalism Sources

This guide has been designed to assist you in finding resources for research in Communications/Journalism and related fields. Feel free at any time to use our Ask Us Anything chat, email, or instant answers service for additional assistance, or contact Aaron Dobbs, awdobbs@ship.edu.

Resources for PR Campaign Project

Basic Info

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Sources for Basic and Background Information in Communications/Journalism and Related Fields

Reference Sources

Articles

Communications/Journalism - Start Here

Search Comm. Journalism Databases

Search Mass Comm. Databases
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This box simultaneously searches Communication Source and Academic Search Complete.

Communications/Journalism - Specialized Resources

PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service)

JSTOR

JSTOR content is usually from articles published at least 5 years ago.

 

Books

Using Books for Research

The most efficient way to view the library's book holdings (in both print and eBook) is to use the ShipLibrary Discovery Service (recently renamed ED), and limit your results to books. For assistance in finding a book, contact Ashley Esposito, anesposito@ship.edu, or ask any research librarian at Lehman Library (including through chat!).

Shippensburg eBook Collections

Searching for Books on Communications/Journalism

There are many different techniques to find books on a particular topic in Communications/Journalism. The following links provide access to the Shippensburg Library catalog, WorldCat, the Library of Congress, and several research collections that specialize in Communications/Journalism.

Citing Sources

APA Style Formatting

The below links to Purdue OWL for APA will help you to set up/format your document in addition to creating a reference list and in-text citations.

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

Quick Guides
Detailed Help
Manual / APA Website
Tutorials, Sample Papers

Staying Current

Staying Current in Library Databases

There are two main ways to use library databases to stay current with your areas of research interest: by saving searches and setting up alerts. Many databases will allow you to save a search that you have done and run it again in order to see if new material has been added to the database that matches your search terms. Most databases will allow you to set up an alert to notify you automatically, through either an email alert or RSS feed, when new material has met your search criteria. They will also let you set up alerts when new issues of specific journals have been added to the database.

EBSCO Databases will let you save or set up alerts for almost anything in the database. On a search result page or on the Publication page for a specific journal, simply click the Alert / Save / Share link and use the tools in the drop down box.

You can also use this drop down box to obtain a Persistent link to almost anything in the database as well. This is an excellent way to share a specific group of items from a database with other people.

JSTOR allows you to set up alerts, via email or RSS Feed. To do this in JSTOR, go to the main page for the specific journal, then use the links in the Journal Tracking box to set up your alerts.