Library Accounts
Register online for your library account or at the Circulation Desk on the main floor of the library. Rockhurst students, faculty and staff are required to use their Rockhurst email addresses in their library accounts. Library accounts expire at the end of each semester so you will need to reactivate your account next semester. This can also be done online.

You will be given a unique identification number in addition to your library account number. With this library account number and unique borrower identification number you may:

Understanding the Difference Between Scholarly Journals, Trade Journals and Popular Magazines
Criteria to determine how scholarly and trade journal articles differ from general interest magazine articles in the field can be found on the Scholarly Journal, Trade Journal or Popular Magazine? research guide.

Sources of Analysis and Discussion in Library Databases for Communication Theory
The following are a selection of the possible databases you could use to research a communication's topic. Start with these databases, then once you have utilized these, ask a librarian for guidance to other databases.  

Off campus access is available through the VPN proxy server provided by Computer Services. The Off Campus Access to Databases page will link you to the page provided by Computer Services. If you link directly to the library's web site outside of VPN you will not be able to use the databases.

Communication & Mass Media Complete

This is an index to research journals in the areas of communication and mass media studies.

PsycINFO [Psychological Abstracts]

Citations and abstracts to journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations and reports on psychology and related fields. 1887 - present.

PsycARTICLES
Full text of the journals of the American Psychological Association and allied organizations from 1987 - present. All journals are indexed in PsycINFO, which is the complete version of Psychological Abstracts online.

Social Sciences Abstracts
Citations and abstracts to international, English-language periodicals in sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, political science, and law. From 1983 - present.

Business Source Premier
This database offers information in nearly every area of business including management, economics, finance, accounting, international business, and more. Also included are country economic reports and company profiles.

JSTOR
This database is an online archive of scholarly journals in a wide variety of disciplines which have been digitally reproduced to provide access to the backfile of each title. Some titles go back to the 19th century. JSTOR will not include the latest 2 - 5 years of the journals for most titles, although some publishers of journals are now providing links to some recent content.

Evaluating Web Sites
These are guides to criteria to help evaluate the quality of web sites. Some provide tutorials or exercises that are self-paced. All of these guides are from higher education web sites, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html
This site has excellent examples of bias in web sites. It presents four very different sites in a variety of topics (cigarette smoking, AIDs, immigration, drugs) and gives the user criteria for evaluating each site.

ROCKIT
This tutorial on the library's web site has a section on evaluating web sites, along with other information on doing research.

Identifying Books and Journals in the Library Collection
Books owned by the library can be identified by using the Online Catalog. Rockhurst University is a member of the MOBIUS consortium consisting of 60 Missouri academic libraries. Books available in MOBIUS libraries can be requested by you and sent here for your use. Additional information about this is found on the Patron Initiated Borrowing Through the Online Catalog guide.

Periodicals (journals, newspapers and magazines) owned by the library can be identified by linking to the Periodical Holdings page on the library web site. On this page you will be directed to use the Periodicals Holdings List to see if we have a subscription to a title.

Interlibrary Loan
Articles not found full text in the library's collection can be ordered from other libraries across the country through Interlibrary Loan. Databases in EBSCOhost have a link in each record which allows you to submit your request right from the database. Otherwise, use the forms on our Interlibrary Loan page to submit your request electronically. Books are free; articles are 20 cents per page per article. Generally you will have your materials within a week.

Proper Citation of Sources
When using information from other sources, whether copyrighted or not, it is necessary to give attribution to those sources. Doing so will help you avoid plagiarism.

More information about copyright is found on the Copyright and Fair Use guide.

Information on how to avoid plagiarism is on the Avoiding Plagiarism guide.

The library provides the RefWorks bibliographic management system. This is a bibliography management program that allows Rockhurst University faculty, students and staff to set up their own online account to manage electronic citations imported from databases subscribed to by the Greenlease Library as well as input citation information from print sources. Only Rockhurst University email accounts may be used with RefWorks accounts. These citations are easily incorporated into documents created in word processing programs. Many citation formats are included.

RefWorks Account Information

Tutorial and Quick Start Guide (PDF 2.42MB)*

Connect to RefWorks 

How to Export Saved Citations from a Database Into RefWorks (PDF 87KB)*

Adding References Manually to RefWorks

Additional Sources of Information in the Library Collection 

In addition to the sources listed below, the library has many print sources in the Reference collection that give information on a wide range of subjects. Most of these sources cannot be checked out, so plan time to visit the library to consult them. Many of these are listed on the Research Guides Subject List available on the library web site and the Internet Sources Subject List  available on the library web site.

* PDF document which requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view, download or print.

Updated August 21, 2008