EDUCATION 216: Education, Society & Social Policy

Once you have an author to research, there are several steps you should take to gather the information you will need for your paper.

Always start by using the Wellesley College Online Catalog.

To get to the Catalog, go to the college's Home Page, scroll down to Computing/Library, then to Library, & Library Catalog. Click on Library Catalog. Under the Research Resources column, click on Databases A-Z, Research Guides by Subject, including the subheading, Special Tools & Topics. Other sites of interest would be our new Reference Books Online section, (including Britannica Online ), Search the Web, and the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) page.

[Just a cautionary note about using the WWW --- Literary comments from articles with no designated author, or an author with no stated credentials, should be suspect. Because it is on the Web does not mean the information is accurate!] Click on the Writing Subject page and look at the mentioned resources, both paper and electronic. These are reliable, scholarly resources that should be helpful as you do research for your chosen topic.

FindIt! @ Wellesley (click on the title for more information) is one of our newest features and helps retrieve more full-text articles than ever before. It will also link the user to NExpress or ILL if our libraries do not have access to the title.

Titles for Background Reading:

Chance to Learn: The History of Race & Education in the United States - Clapp Lib LC3731 .W44.

Education in the United States: A Documentary History, 3 vols. - Clapp Lib &/or Reserve LA 205 .C53.

Education in the United States: An Interpretive History - Clapp Reserve LA212 .C53.

Encyclopedia of American Education, 3 vols. - Clapp Ref LB17 .U54 2001.

Encyclopedia of Education, 8 vols. - Clapp Ref LB15 .E47 2003.

Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of the Handicapped & Other Exceptional Children & Adults, 3 vols. - Clapp Ref LC4007 .E53 2000.

Electronic Databases:

To find books not at Wellesley College: Use WorldCat (via FirstSearch) to find books and other materials not here at Wellesley.

Three electronic sources which should prove useful research in this subject area are:

Education Full Text with indexing back to 1983 and full text from 1996 on. This resource contins articles on all aspects of education.

ERIC - Education Journals/Digests which accesses education articles and reports from 1966 on.

Teacher Reference Center provides indexing & abstracts from the 80s on from over 280 teacher & administrator trade journals.

Additional Databases to Try:

Infotrac Onefile provides articles on current events, popular culture, the arts, social science, and sciences.

JSTOR - A collection of humanities, social sciences, & natural science journals from the earliest issues but NOT the latest 5 years. A full-text source.

[Once you decide to print an article, set the preference to PDF Economy for the quickest results. Once the print command has been given, wait for the article to be downloaded. When the JSTOR icon appears on the right side of the page, click on the printer icon directly above the reformatted article].

LexisNexis Academic - This resource provides full-text articles from newspapers world-wide. Most date from the 80s to the present.

Sociological Abstracts has articles from the 80s to the present on social welfare and policy topics plus community development pieces.

WilsonWeb - Education Full Text (see above) is one of the disciplines in this database. If you want citations to cross all the available disciplines, choose the OmniFile Full Text option. (1994 +).

Citation Information:

For electronic MLA version citation information, go to Resources by Subject page & click on Citation Style Guides under Special Tools & Topics. Click on Documenting Sources MLA Style. Now click on the Word icon next to the MLA Citation line. Click “Open” and this will bring up MLA Style Citation with many examples for print and electronic sources. The examples for print sources are given first, and you will have to scroll down to find Full-Text Resources from Subscription Databases for the electronic information. A number of examples using databases from our A-Z list are illustrated in that section. Further down you will access Internet Resources, and various examples are given there for information gathered from the WWW .

For print version citation information, go to the main desk in the Reference Room. Copies of Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.), MLA Handbook, (6th ed.), and Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 5th ed.) are some of the print versions kept there for the convenience of students working on papers in the library who would prefer to use print citation guides.

If you are still having difficulties once you have begun work on your papers, please contact me and set up an appointment for a one-on-one session.

Jacqueline B. Fitzpatrick
Research & Instruction Specialist
Room 247 - (781)283-3497
jfitzpat@wellesley.edu

February 8, 2007

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