Research Skills for M.A. Students 1.2, Scholarly Articles & Websites

1. Scholarly Articles

• The Scholarly Periodical
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Evaluating Periodicals

  • Magazines for Libraries [Ref. PN4832 .M23]

  • Publisher websites, e.g. Word & World
• Finding periodicals at Drew
• Database vendors (e.g. Ebsco) vs. Database publishers (e.g. ATLA)
• Periodical Indexing (e.g. ATLA) vs Periodical Storage (e.g. JSTOR)
• ATLA
  • Browsing vs Subject searching vs Keyword searching
  • Articles vs. Essays
  • Tip sheet 
• Print indexes

  • Catholic Periodical and Literature Index [Ref. AC13 .C32]

  • Methodist [and United Methodist] Periodical Index, 1961-1980 [Methodist Center Reading Room]

• General Indexes
  • Academic Search Premier
  • Proquest Research Library
  • Reader's Guide Retrospective
  • ArtStor
  • JSTOR
  • Google Scholar (again): example of article here but not in ATLA
• Quick guide to citing articles in journals, essays in books, and book reviews

2. Websites

• Free vs. Proprietary websites
  • Wikipedia
  • Evaluating websites (and a chart)
• Kinds of online sources
  • Digitized print sources. e.g. Encyclopedia of World Methodism, A Time to Be Born
  • Digitized photos of manuscripts and other archival resources, e.g. Wesley letters, Codex Sinaiticus, Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Information about organizations, e.g. WCC
  • Original research and unpublished papers. e.g megachurches, SSRN, DOAJ, Institutional Repositories
  • Bibliographies, e.g. Black American feminisms
  • Online journalism, e.g. Frontline and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and NOVA
  • Government documents, accessed through GPO Access, e.g. from U.S. Institute of Peace and Dept. of State
  • Unique databases, e.g., Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and ERIC
  • Statistics, e.g. Adherents.com
  • Course syllabi, e.g.from the American Academy of Religion
  • Employment opportunities, e.g.idealist.org, HigherEdJobs
  • Blogs, e.g. Antiquitopia
• Searching the Web
  • Google
    • Advanced Search
    • Spinoffs, e.g. Google Images
  • Classified indexes
    • Drew Library's recommendations in religion and theology and in Education
    • the Wabash Center
• Citing Websites
  • Guidance from the Chicago Manual of Style, rule 14.245
  • Guidance from Wisconsin-Parkside

3. The Art of Annotation

• Abstracts vs. Annotations
• Critical reading
  • Identifying the thesis
  • Summarizing
  • Critiquing
• Some guidance from
  • University of Toronto
  • Purdue  
  • Earlham        
  • University of Minnesota

4. Managing citations:Endnote