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Data Bases Rather than buying books and subscribing to many magazines and journals, which then need to be stored on shelves in the library, more and more libraries are subscribing to Data Bases. A Data Base is really an electronic library. Rather than having a book or magazine in its physical form, data bases make information available electronically on your monitor. This information may then be printed out to give you a paper copy. This saves libraries money and space. Unfortunately, data bases do not give students a physical sense of the context within which the article appeared originally. The electronic library may in some senses be more convenient and provide more information, but it also distorts the learning process. Articles which may have been written over decades in a multiplicity of journals appear grouped together in one batch. Most data bases simply provide access to a large amount of information found in a large number of journals and books. You must cite these journals and books as if you had actually held them in your hand. The name and URL of the data base is the secondary information that must be added. Often the way that the data base provides the article hides the fact from where the information came. Thus students who do not know how to cite a scholarly journal (or recognize a scholarly journal) have problems with data bases. There is also too much information. Below is the generic form for an article within a scholarly journal found in a data base. This is the format that I want you to follow for citing data bases. Name of Author or Authors
[last name
first, but for first author only]. Name of Article
[in quotation Data bases are no fun when they have to be cited in a bibliography. The Main Page for Union County College is: http://www.ucc.edu/default.htm The main page for the Union County College
Kenneth C. MacKay Library is: An Alphabetical List of all UCC Databases
on: A Listing of UCC Databases by Subject is
found on: Some of the databases for subjects taught by Prof. Damerow are:
History & Philosophy Law /
Legal Research News,
Current Events & Social Issues
Political Science & Government Accessed
Updated December 3, 2007 |