Use these databases to find journal and news articles. (To connect to them and find  more databases, see the Library's Databases page).

InfoTrac OneFile -- Over 8,000 news and magazine articles on a wide range of subjects; some full e-text; information as far back as 1980.

General Reference Center Gold -- Over 2,700 business and general interest magazines; some full e-text; information as far back as 1980.

Use Catalyst to find items in the CSM Library, especially for these topics:

• Earth resources--minerals, oil and natural gas, water
• Energy and alternate energy sources
• Technology and society--ethics, impacts, etc.
• History of science and technology
• Pollution and the environment
• Sustainable development

Use Prospector to find items in the region's academic and public libraries, on all topics. Prospector:

• Shows you which libraries own the items you're looking for
• Shows you whether a library owns a journal volume you need
• Allows you to do your own interlibrary loans for items that check out
  • You need a valid library card from a participating library
  • The item arrives at your local library for pick-up
  • You return the item at your local library by the due-date

Compare search engines with Search Engine Showdown

AlltheWeb.com

EnviroLink: Supported by a non-profit group to distribute environmental information and news. Browse linked resources by topic or select from current news headlines.

Environmental News Service: Supported by a for-profit company. This wire service for international environmental news has short full-text articles with a 2-year archive.

FindArticles.com: Supported by for-profit companies. Search for articles from over 300 journals on a range of popular subjects; full text; information from 1998-present.

National Public Radio: Supported by non-profit NPR. Includes news headlines, summaries of NPR radio programs, and short full-text articles on public policy topics.

YaleGlobal Online Magazine: Supported by the non-profit Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Includes articles on topics in economics, society and the environment.

Books:

• Useful for overviews and summaries (introductory chapters, etc.)
• Lots of detail and explanation, both general and specific
• May include historical background
• Not published quickly--Not always current to the month (or even year)
• Can be scholarly or non-scholarly

Journal articles:

• Useful information in "small bites."
• Brief descriptions of the topic, with very specific explanations
• May only have a brief paragraph on previous research or history
• Often published quickly--May be current up to a month or week's news
• Can be scholarly or non-scholarly

Authoritative sources:  Where the author is recognized as an authority. Examples: The Colorado Dept. of Natural Resources is an authority when the issue is Colorado's state parks. Stephen Hawking is an authority on Big Bang theories.

Scholarly sources: Sources are also treated as authoritative if they are "scholarly," if they record their research and cite supporting scholarly sources. Scholarly sources have:

• Citations and a bibliography
• An appearance of impartiality--no advertisements or unsupported opinions.
• Well-documented authors, often with credentials, professional affiliations, or employers
• The results of research, experimentation, or observation using reputable methods

Scholarly sources are used to:

• Communicate information "for the record" in an authoritative manner
• Deliver impartial, reproducible or reliable findings
• Support other scholarly works (like your own)

Non-Scholarly sources: May be accurate and useful but usually don't include supporting sources:

• No citations or bibliography
• May have advertisements, opinions, bias
• No authors listed, or no authors' credentials, etc.
• Reports on news, controversy, or industry developments

Non-scholarly sources are commonly used:

• When reporting news or current events
• On topics where controversy, opinion or news play strong roles
• For industry or business topics, to address a specific need or report on a specific problem

Non-scholarly sources may still be authoritative. Even if they're not, they can be very helpful for N&HV. Use with care, and support them with information from scholarly publications where appropriate.

IEEE Computer Society Style Guide - References  (Provides examples)

US Copyright Office Guidelines

Example Copyright Guidelines

• Plagiarism and copyright violations are bad.

Second, the positives:

• Citing sources is the hallmark of scholarly communication. It strengthens your work by showing that you have built your research upon others' works before you.
• By citing others you give them the credit they deserve for their intellectual property.
• You give your readers the ability to explore your ideas by providing them with related citations.
• Citing other works encourages you to think. By getting down on paper how others' ideas connect to yours, and by putting some of those ideas into your own words, you get the concepts more firmly into your head. Anything else is cheating yourself on your education.

No. No. No. Everything is NOT on the Web.

To make matters worse:

• Much of the Web's information is unverified or not peer-reviewed--you (or your instructor) may suspect it.
• The Web page you use today may be gone next week.
• Some information is available only if you pay for it. (The Library spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on Web information for you.)
• No Web search engine identifies ALL webpages--so even if it's there, you may not be able to find it.

Bottom line--The Web is great, but not for EVERYTHING. Using the Web as a universal application is like using duct tape as a universal repair product; it may "work" but you could have often done better.

• Current news, including weather, politics, conflicts, crime
• "Finding" people, businesses, organizations
• Advertising
• Recreation--Sports, entertainment, movies, music
• US government-produced information
• Special interests--A grab-bag category heavily dependent on individuals' contributions but sharing in common a level of personal obsession. (Examples: hobbies, fringe social movements, specialized areas of research, etc.)
• Library and museum holdings

• Being relied on to supply ALL information
• Being treated as the definitive information source ("It must be true; I found it on the Web!")
• Being used as a crutch by those who don't want to get off the computer
• Giving the impression that all information is "free"--clearly not the case considering copyright and commercial resources

1. Be interesting to you. It's easier to write about something you care about.
2. Have both a current tie-in and a history. It's easier to find lots of information on a topic that has been in the news or magazines within the last year, and that also has a background or history further back in time.
3. Be "scalable." Can your topic be limited if it starts to get out of control? Can it be expanded if you suddenly find out that you don't have enough to work with?

A good way to get ideas is to browse the current news. You're hearing a lot about water restrictions. Your neighbor's lawn is dying but Golden's Clear Creek is flowing just fine. What's going on? Who owns the water, and where's it going? You decide to write your paper on water use in Colorado. (You can expand this topic to water use in the Western US, or limit it to types of water use or just water use in Denver if you need to.)

Skills needed:

• Select tools to help you find information
• Construct a search strategy for those tools
• Evaluate your results
• Cite your sources

You.  You're an important source of information, especially for a paper that involves ethics, politics, opinions or advocacy. What do you think are the current issues on water use in Colorado? List them.

Librarian.  Librarians have practical tips on research; just call, e-mail or drop by the library. They are used to working with students with deadlines, and their advise is "scalable" to fit your circumstances--they know how to help students with short paper assignments. To expand your list of issues, you ask a librarian for quick-and-dirty advise. Recommendations:

"Water Resources Online" by the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension

The Colorado Water Conservation Board's website

The librarian also recommends that you do some quick searching on the Web.

The Web.  The Web is a good way to "get a feel" for current or controversial topics. You do a search using Google:

• Start by searching with the keywords "water" and "colorado." Clearly, people have a lot to say about water use.
• Add keywords such as "drought", "use", "conservation." While browsing the results, you pick up more keywords, including "xeriscape" and "reservoir."
• You notice that government agencies seem to have useful information on their websites. You use Google's Advanced Search feature to limit your search to just ".gov" domain sites.
• Evaluate your results:
  • Do authors seem to know what they're talking about?
  • Who sponsored the website?
  • When was the website last updated?
  • Does the site contain advertisements and pop-ups? Are they trying to sell you something water-related?
  • Is the website pro or con on an issue? (Bias isn't necessarily bad, but you need to recognize it.)
• Finally, you identify several "authoritative" or trustworthy sites, as well as some less authoritative but still useful for your assignment. You record the information needed to cite the websites for your bibliography.

Add the issues you've identified from your Web search to your original list, and rank the issues by importance in YOUR opinion.

Agriculture and water use in Colorado

"Big Gulp" urban users (golf courses, water parks, car washes)

Private water use (lawns, home use, etc.)

Water technology and storage: water treatment, reservoirs, diverting water to other users (for example the Aquaduct Return Project (CARP) aka "The Big Straw")

Water ownership: How Colorado is affected by other Western states' water needs.

Your pick: "Private water use in Colorado in times of drought." (Final check--does this topic include issues in both ethics and nature to match your assignment? Yes.)

Skills needed:

• Select tools to help you find information
• Construct a search strategy for those tools
• Evaluate your results
• Cite your sources

Journal article database.  The Library subscribes to hundreds of databases. Using the Library's NHV webpage, you pick Academic Search Premier. (Academic Search Premier is linked on the Library website's Databases page.)

• Since you're not sure if using this database is the same as searching Google, you click "Help" and note the differences between the two.
• You do a keyword search on "water" and "colorado"--just a simple search to begin. You want your results to include a variety of articles since you are still trying to figure out what's useful. Too few hits (0-10) means less to pick from and maybe no articles that are readily available. Too many hits, though, means too much time spent going through the list.
• Your search retrieves over 1,000 hits, way too many. You narrow down your search by adding keywords such as "drought" or "conservation." You also try different keyword combinations--for example, articles may be useful even if they aren't about Colorado. Academic Search Premier, like many databases, lets you "mark" articles of interest, in this case by adding them to an e-folder that you can get later.
• The database also lets you limit your search results by "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" or by "Full text". You know that you need at least one scholarly publication, and you'd prefer your articles to be available online (PDF or HTML files). You experiment with both features.
• Finally, you e-mail the citations you've selected to yourself, which include some articles published within the past 6 months. You will cut-and-paste the citation information into your paper's bibliography and format it later.

CSM Library Catalog (Catalyst).  Catalyst is like most library catalogs--you can search for books and journals, but cannot usually search the individual book chapters or journal articles inside (that's why you need to use a journal article database too).

• Catalyst lets you search in a variety of ways, but since you're looking for books on a subject, you use one of the Keyword searches to search combinations of "colorado" and "water" and "use." You also experiment with word such as "desert" or "xeriscape" or even "lawn."
• The results include:
  • "History of Drought in Colorado"
  • "Analysis of Residential Use of Water in the Denver Metropolitan Area..."
  • "Xeriscape Landscaping: Preventing Pollution and Using Resources Efficiently"
  • "Lawn: A History of an American Obsession."
• Catalyst gives the call number and general location of the books. You browse through them and evaluate. Some are authoritative; others are less so but still useful. Identify useful sections in each book--you don't have time to read them cover-to-cover. You record the information you'll need to cite these books.

Now you have both current and historical information for your topic.

• Fill in holes. Identify any gaps in your research. You re-check your sources and:

• Try new keywords
• Re-examine resources for new information
• Track down web links or materials cited by the authors of publications you've found useful

• Cite your sources: 

• Use the citation information you've collected to cite your supporting sources in your paper
• List your sources in a bibliography at the paper's end

DONE!