There’s no sound for this video – I am just showing you the steps I go through to find an article. In this
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I start with the TCC Home Page. www.tccd.edu
I search “Library” in the search bar.
I click on the libraries web page, which is the first site in the search results.
The library page opens with the option to search the catalog. I enter the poet’s name (in my
example, I use Adrienne Rich) in the search box, and then in the box to the right, I select that I
want to search for “Database Articles.”
I get over 16,000 search results!
I limit the search (on the left, using the search filters) to 1980-2017. I still have over 15,000
results!
I use another filter on the left to limit my results to “poetry,” since any other article is on the
wrong person or subject. (I only want articles about Adrienne Rich the poet)
I make sure the “Full text online” filter is included on the left (this way, I only find articles that I
can access electronically). This filter is usually activated automatically.
I open the first article by clicking the “full text” link.
I have to sign in to the library to access the article.
I click one of the links to a database that has the article in full text. In this case, there are several
databases that have the article available. I choose Ebscohost, because it’s a database I am
familiar with.
I click the PDF Full Text link on the left to pull up the article itself.
This article ends up being a poem about Adrienne Rich!! While it’s interesting, it’s not what I
need for this assignment.
I go back to my search results. After scrolling through the results, it looks like there are a lot of
things not really on-topic for my project.
I include a key word from the title of the poem (“tigers”) to make my results more specific to my
needs. The more words I include in my search term, the fewer results I’ll get. So, if I weren’t
getting enough results, I would try fewer words.
I have re-apply my filters: the years, etc. on the left hand side.
I find an article with full text available that is about the poem I’ve chosen, “Aunt Jennifer’s
Tigers.” This is literary criticism – someone’s published interpretation of a work of literature.
I click the link to open the article.
I scroll through and see that it’s on the topic I need and has information I can use.
At the 4:00 mark, I start to point out the features that are available. I can download a .pdf of this
article to read later. I can email the article and citation (in MLA format) to myself, and I can click
on “citation” and it will create a citation for me (in MLA format) to copy and paste.