Find Articles - Introduction to Public Speaking - COM 2213 - LibGuides at Oklahoma City Community College

Reasons to use articles?

For very recent, current information
Easy to find credible information
Cover very specific subjects
Popular topics
Alternative viewpoints
Reports on scholarly research

Understanding Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Sources

When using a database to find articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers, it is important to understand the different types of sources.

Scholarly Sources

Scholarly, or "peer-reviewed" sources, are written by scholars for other scholars and students in a particular field.
These sources undergo an extensive review process (peer-review) before they are published.
Usually uses highly technical, specific language in the article.

Trade Sources

Trade sources are written for experts and students in a given field.
Although they are not scholarly in nature, trade publications can be excellent sources of information.

Popular Sources

Popular sources are written for a general audience.
Popular sources range from entertainment magazines like People to highly regarded national newspapers, such as The New York Times.
Evaluate articles to make sure they are credible and relevant to your assignment.

Relevant Databases

The following links are good databases to use to find articles when researching and preparing speeches for the Introduction to Public Speaking class.

AtoZ the World This link opens in a new window
Information about countries of the world, including culture, customs, food, holidays, music, religion, maps, and other facts.
CultureGrams This link opens in a new window
Provides brief reports on each country, discussing land, history, people, customs, lifestyle, society, and government. The database also has a separate section for children and reports on the U.S. states. Includes maps, some statistics, photographs, some biographical information, and a few representative recipes.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with most full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format.
MasterFILE Complete This link opens in a new window
Designed specifically for public libraries, this multidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 2,000 general reference publications with full text information dating as far back as 1922. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, it also contains full text for more than 1,000 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps & flags.
Newspaper Source Plus This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 860 full-text newspapers, providing more than 35 million full-text articles. In addition, the database features more than 857,000 television and radio news transcripts.
Opposing Viewpoints In Context This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Variety of resources for research on controversial topics or argumentative papers.

Country and Culture Speech

Searching in EBSCOhost

Not sure how to use EBSCOhost? Use the following tutorials to help you get you started.

Basic Searching - Ebscohost
This tutorial will walk you through how to search for articles in EBSCOhost.
Library Research Help: Find Articles
This guide has additional information to help you search in EBSCOhost.

Consider the following tutorials for additional tips and tricks on using EBSCOhost databases.

Boolean Advanced Searching Tutorial
This tutorial will walk you through how to do boolean advance searching in EBSCOhost.
Proximity Advanced Searching Tutorial
This tutorial will walk you through how to do proximity advance searching in EBSCOhost.
Wildcard and Truncation Advanced Searching Tutorial
This tutorial will walk you through how to do wildcard and truncation advance searching in EBSCOhost.

EBSCOhost Article Tutorial [Video]

Tips on Focusing Your Search in EBSCOhost

Like the OCCC Library Catalog, EBSCOhost has a way to narrow or limit your search results. Here is a list of the main limiters and how they can be used.

Databases: Select relevant databases that are related to your search. Selecting all the databases will bring back results that aren't related to your topic.
Keywords: Use keywords, not sentences .
Add Keywords: Add additional keywords in the second or third search box to help narrow your topic.
Exclude Keywords: If your results bring back a lot of articles that isn't what you're looking for, but has a keyword in common, you can remove it from your search by using "NOT" instead of "AND" in the keyword area.
Full Text: Limits your results to only articles that are available to be viewed in their entirety. This is good for when you really want to find an article you can start reading right away, but bad because you will not see results for articles that are available in paper format in the OCCC Library. Also, you will not see other relevant articles that are not owned that you could then order via Interlibrary Loan.
Peer Reviewed: Limits your results to only peer reviewed or scholarly articles.Your instructor will let you know if you need this type of article. If you aren't sure, ask your instructor or let a librarian read your assignment.
Publication Date: Check to see if your assignment requires an article to be published within a specific date range.
Source Type: Limits your results to a specific source like newspaper, magazine, or academic journal.
Change Keywords: Sometimes there are synonyms for different words. If you don't like your results, consider changing the keyword to something similar (example: child, infant, toddler, etc.)