Four Major Electronic Resources

The four major electronic resources you will use to investigate your topic are:

1. EBSCOhost, which allows you to search within professional journals (including CQ Researcher)
2. LexisNexis Academic Universe, which allows you to both search and acquire full-text copies of newspaper and magazine articles and the transcripts of some news shows (e.g., CNN, NBC).
3. PantherCAT, the online catalog of Hanover's Duggan Library
4. WorldCat, an online catalog of published books

Accessing and Using the Resources

EBSCOhost

Accessing EBSCOhost

1. Go to the Hanover College Library webpage: http://library.hanover.edu/
2. Click on the link "A-Z List of Electronic Resources"
3. Scroll down until you get to "EBSCOhost" and click that link
4. Click on "EBSCOhost Web" (shortcut: http://search.epnet.com/)
5. "Academic Search Premier" should be selected, and you'll want to scroll down and also select "MasterFILE Premier." These two databases pull from a wide range of journals. Push the "Continue" button at the top or bottom of the screen.

Using EBSCOhost

To search for articles in all available EBSCOhost sources:

1. Type your topic (let's say you're doing the Intelligent Design versus Evolution debate) into the first "Find" field:
2. To narrow your focus to articles that spend most of their time just on this issue, indicate that you only want to search for articles that have "Intelligent Design" in their title:
   
   *Note: If you don't get many articles by restricting the search to titles, try searching within "Default Fields"
3. If articles are available, they will appear.
4. Some articles may have links that say "HTML full text" or "PDF full text." These will take you directly to full-text versions of the articles (PDF is usually a photo image of the original article and is better for printing, HTML is just computer text and is not as pretty but is faster to access, especially over a dialup connection).
   DO NOT SELECT SOURCES JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE AVAILABLE FULL-TEXT. Instead, choose the sources that look the best. Here's how to tell:
5. To get the full citation for each article, click on its link. Read the Abstract to see if the article looks useful to you.
6. If you are unfamiliar with a journal, click on its name to get information about it:
   
   To decide if the source is trustworthy, look at who publishes it and whether it is peer-reviewed (screened by experts before publication):
   
   If you're still unsure about the credibility of a source, ask your instructor.
7. To see what Hanover's access is to the article, click on the link and a new window will open. By clicking on the arrows () next to each listed resource, you can learn more (e.g., you can search the Duggan Library to see if we have the resource). If the resource says "Table of Contents," then that's all you will be able to get - you won''t get the full-text article through EBSCOhost.

To search within a particular source (e.g., CQ Researcher):

1. Type "CQ Researcher" in the first blank:
2. Select "SO Journal name" to the right of that:
3. Type your topic in the first blank on the second line:
4. If there are any issues of CQ Researcher that have covered this topic, they will appear. For example:
   

Academic Universe

Accessing LexisNexis Academic Universe

1. Go to the Hanover College Library webpage: http://library.hanover.edu/
2. Click on the link "A-Z List of Electronic Resources"
3. Scroll down into the "A's" until you get to Academic Universe, and click on that link (shortcut: http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe)

Using LexisNexis Academic Universe

1. For a quick news search, simply type a phrase into the main window. For example, you could type in "Hurricane Katrina" to get articles on that topic.
2. If the quick search isn't getting you the articles you want, click on "Guided News Search"
   1. Step One: News Category - I'd recommend "General News"
   2. Step Two: News Source - Try at least "Major Papers" and "Magazines and Journals"
   3. Step Three: Search Terms - You get three search fields to use. You can search in the headlines, search by author, and even search through the full text.
   4. Step Four (optional): Date Range - Use this when you're looking for an article in a particular time period, for example right after September 11th, 2001.
   5. Step Five (optional): Publication Title - Use this when you only want articles from a particular source.
3. Note: if your search will return over 1,000 documents, LexisNexis gives you an error message and asks you to narrow your search.
4. Tip: Magazines tend to offer more background information than newspapers, so you may want to begin by reading magazine articles. I would particularly recommend The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, and The Economist. Use Step Five to search within a particular magazine, or click on "Source List" to the right of Step Two to select up to 5 magazines to search within.

PantherCAT

Accessing PantherCAT

1. Go to the Hanover College Library webpage: http://library.hanover.edu/
2. Click on "PantherCAT" under "Research Tools and Collections"

Using PantherCAT

1. If you know the title and want to see where it is in the library, enter the title in the Browse window
2. If you are searching for a book, use the Keyword Search window
3. To narrow your search, select "Subject keywords" or even "Title keywords" instead of "Keyword anywhere"

WorldCat

Accessing WorldCat

1. Go to the Hanover College Library webpage: http://library.hanover.edu/
2. Click on the link "A-Z List of Electronic Resources"
3. Scroll down into the "W's" until you get to WorldCat, and click on that link

Using WorldCat

1. Enter the topics you're investigating into the "Search for" windows
2. Unless you want sources in non-English languages, Limit the search to English
3. If you are just looking for books, select "Limit type to: Books"
4. To narrow a search, search within "Title" or "Subject phrase" rather than "Keyword"
5. WorldCat's results are sorted by the number of libraries that have a copy, a good indicator of the value that librarians and other scholars place on a particular text.