Welcome to UNO Mavericks' Poly Sci Grad Students' Resources!

This student supported and maintained web page is aimed at bridging the gap between the experiences that on campus students have and those that we, Distance Education Students, have. We can use this space, which is not affiliated with the UNO Political Science Department, as a quick reference to help us through our time at UNO from selecting courses, to material covered during class, and potentially after graduation. On campus students should also feel free to use, and contribute to, this resource.

If you want to get on our mailing list, let us know. Updates will be sent out when new posts are made and at the end of semesters to help select classes.

Please note that the posts specific to class topics were pulled down. We currently do not have the resources to maintain class topic specific posts, and we would rather have no information posted, rather than put out conflicting or incorrect information.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Researching



Fellow Students,
I had a little realization about all of the resources we have at our fingertips that are just a little less obvious since we are on-line rather than on-campus.

The first, and best, resource we have is the UNO Criss Library:  https://library.unomaha.edu/

The easiest resource to use is the search box that you'll find in the upper right quadrant (circled in red) of the page labeled "Find items at UNO Criss Library".  You can use to search the on-line databases, and e-books in addition to the on campus resources that are available for Inter-Library Loan.
A more selective search can be found by using the advanced search features on the particular database webpages, their links are located in the bottom left quadrant (circled in blue) on the link labeled "Top Databases for Finding Articles".  For domestic or world issues, I prefer the scholarly journals offered on JSTOR, and I find its advanced search more user friendly than the others.  For foreign issues, I find Wiley to be most effective at finding content.  You can specify the time ranges, select fields of journals or specify the exact journal, and even if it doesn't have the journal (some of those more miniscule topics) it will give you the citation so you can use one of the other on-line databases on the Criss Library website to find what you need.  I have yet to run out of journals or resources.

These sources will also quickly provide the you with citation for the bibliography for your papers.  "My Library Account" for the books that you check out of the Criss Library, and the various journal search engines have citation creation options when downloading the documents.

In the bottom middle of the page (and to the right of the big blue circle) you'll find a "Distance Education" link which provides you with some great additional resources aimed at us.

The second resource we have is local universities and colleges.  Virtually all are open to the public, and many are willing to give you a 'local resident' card which allows you to check out some of the resources available at their library.

The third best resource is the community library.

Combining those last two is Inter-Library Loan, which I have used to pull books from around the country.  As an on-line student we have priority for ILL requests submitted to UNO, so if you persue this option, be sure to mention your status.  This process is slow, but it beats buying the book (sometimes Amazon Prime overnight and Kindle are expensive life savers).

If you have time there are a lot of resources on the Criss Library website to help us better understand all of the resources available, I've just covered a few.  If you have found other great resources, or have a quick tip that will save someone time, please speak up by clicking on the word "comments" at the bottom of this post.

Chris
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousMarch 15, 2013 at 6:59 PM

    the EBSCO search engine is used by different databases, making many of them look a like. I was confused by this at first and thought I had lost some ebooks I was using for my paper. If you don't print out the whole document make sure you right down the search engine you got it from. Some don't print their name when you print it out, so you probably should check it before you move on.

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