Guides & How To's

The following is a list of resources to help you find the information you need at Briggs Library. A great place to start is the Library Introduction where you will be invited to explore our SUMMON catalog, learn how to find materials in the library, access Your Account, and even use other library catalogs to locate just what you need.

If you have any questions, please contact Jayne Blodgett, Instruction Coordinator at Briggs Library.

• Library Introduction

An overview of the SUMMON library catalog, how to find library materials, call numbers, Your Account, and other library catalogs such as MN-CAT and WorldCat.

• Building a Search Strategy

Find out how to generate search terms, use limiters as well as Boolean and other advanced searching techniques in library databases.

• Database Searching Examples [Academic Search Premier, Expanded Academic, and JSTOR]

Briggs Library subscribes to over 140 licensed databases. Learn how to search in a few of the most comprehensive ones.

• EndNote User's Guide

Briggs Library subscribes to a campus-wide license for the bibliographic software EndNote. Use it to organize your research sources, create bibliographies and footnotes using thousands of citation styles. To download EndNote please go to the Briggs Library EndNote Download page.

• Evaluating A Website

Websites aren't all the same. Learn how to tell the good ones, from the bad so you can make the right choice on research papers.

• Interlibrary Loan

If there's a book, article, or some other item that you need and Briggs Library doesn't have it, don't worry. All you have to do is request the material through interlibrary loan. We can obtain items from all over the world. Learn how you can get what you need fast.

• Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources

Discover these differences between these different types of sources and what it means for your research

• Research QuickStart

Where do you start when the library holds thousands of books and subscribes to thousands of online journals and provides access to hundreds of databases? Research QuickStart. Learn how to make it work for you.

• Scholarly vs. Popular Materials

How do you tell the difference between a popular magazine and a scholarly journal? It's easier than you think.




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• ACS Web Editions
  

  Provies access to the 34 peer-reviewed publications of the American Chemical Society. Includes over 750,000 articles spanning 130+ years. Learn how to search this database.

• Anthropology Plus
  

  Provides indexes and abstracts for anthropology and archaelogy. Includes Harvard University's Anthropological Literature database as well as the United Kingdom's Anthropological Index. Limit of 1 simultaneous user.

• Art Full Text
  

  Provides access to over 500 journals with nearly 200 available in full text. Find out how to search this database.

• BHA: Bibliography of the History of Art
  

  Provides indexes and abstracts for art books as well as proceedings, exhibitions, dealer's catalogs and articles from more than 4,300 periodicals. Learn how to search this database.

• BIOSIS Previews

  Learn how to search this comprehensive source for life sciences and biomedical research content from nearly 6000 journals.

• Communication and Mass Media Complete

  Provides more than 460 journals (350 of them fill text) in the area of mass media and communication.

• Iter

  A not for profit research project offering resources of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

• JSTOR

  Provides access to hundreds of scholarly journals all in full text from the late 18th century to the last few years. Learn how to search this archival database.

• Lexis Nexis

  Includes Academic, Congressional and Statistical. Provides access to newspaper articles, congressional records, statistical tables and court decisions. Learn how to search all three of these LexisNexis databases.

• MLA

  Produced by the Modern Language Association, MLA International Bibliography includes 1.8 million citations from more than 4,000 journals and book publishers, as well as full-text articles.

• MNCAT

  Includes all of the University of Minnesota library catalogs. Learn how to use this resource.

• New York Times Historical

  Search Current New York Times (1980-Current) and Historical New York Times (Sept. 18, 1851-Dec. 31, 2004).

• PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES

  Make these two premier psychology databases work for you.

• PubMed

  Provides access to biomedical journal citations and abstracts, including MEDLINE. Learn how to search this free governmental resource.

• Science Direct

  Offers over 25% of the world's science, technology and medicine fulltext and bibliographic information. Find out how you can search it.

• U.S. Government Documents User Guide

Explains the SuDocs classification system, how to search and locate government documents as well as citation instructions. [Document created by Governments Documents Librarian Shannon Shi]

• Web of Science

  Includes Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Citation Index as well as the Cited Reference Search tool. Learn how to search this database.

• Wiley Interscience

  Provides access to over 3 million articles from over 1400 science-related journal titles.

• WorldCat.

A global catalog made up of thousands of libraries. Learn how to search this powerful resource.

Documents created by Jayne Blodgett except where noted otherwise.