Oakland Community College Logo - Link to College Home Page
OCC Libraries - Link to Libraries Home Page

Tutorials Welcome
 

 

 

 

 

Open Book Library                       
PC
Tutorial

Finding Articles

Introduction

In the dark about research?  Usually, when you have a research assignment, you need books, articles, and information from the web. 

Searching Man

This tutorial will cover articles: where to start  your search and how to use a typical database to find articles online and in print.

At OCC Libraries you are able to access many periodicals (magazines, journals, and newspapers) in their traditional forms--paper, microfiche, and microfilm.  OCC Libraries also provide you with dozens of web-based databases of electronic periodicals.

Each database contains anywhere from hundreds to over a thousand different periodicals.  The coverage for each periodical comprises multiple years.  And when you consider that each periodical has multiple articles, the overall collection linked from the OCC Libraries web page "Articles / Databases" contains millions of articles, as well as citations to articles (i.e., information about you where you might find articles in print form).

Access to these databases is available, both on- and off-campus, via a variety of OCC Libraries web pages.

  • If you are on-campus: The main page, "Articles / Databases," has on-campus links.  Use those if you are on any OCC campus.

  • If you are off-campus: Near top of the main page is a yellow box.  You may enter your OCC Library card to get to a page of off-campus links.

Blackboard or Educator: Students in classes using either of these online courseware systems may have special pages of links inside the systems for both on- and off-campus use.  Ask your instructor.

Let's review the main page with on-campus links to OCC periodical databases, "Articles / Databases." It will open in a new window so that you may feel free to explore.  After you're done, close that window and you will automatically return here.  (If you have a problem with a link opening in a new window because of a pop-up blocker on your PC, try holding down the Control (Ctrl) button on your keyboard when you click on the link.)

Go  to "Articles / Databases" now.  We'll wait...

Hourglass

...Welcome back.

The next page is the table of contents.  Check it out to see where this tutorial is headed.  Following that will be a few definitions, and then we'll see how a typical database works.

This tutorial is maintained by Ron Healy.  It was last updated 10/09/08.