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Service Learning and Undergraduate Research Office of the Provost

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Resources

One of the most difficult parts of a research paper or project is getting started with a topic and knowing where to look for information that can help you narrow your interest. The following resources make up a small portion of those available at the Sterne and Lister Hill Libraries, but are a good place to jump-start your research efforts.

 

Start Here

To begin, start by searching recent issues of newspapers and magazines for ideas.

  • ERIC (EBSCO)
    • 1988-present
    • cover-to-cover full text from dozens of national and international newspapers
    • selective full text for hundreds of regional newspapers (UAB Libraries has a guide for searching Alabama newspapers)
    • full-text television and radio news transcripts from CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, NPR, etc.
  • Nexis Uni
    • Contains more than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources from LexisNexis, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.
  • National Newspaper Abstracts
    • ProQuest provides abstracts and indexing for New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.
  • Request a research consultation — if you already know what you want to research, ask a specialist librarian for even more information. The Library Liaisons are experts in researching these subjects!
  • Chat with a librarian — you can visit the UAB Libraries website to talk directly to a librarian if you cannot visit the library in person.
  • Is your research for a poster presentation? Visit the UAB Libraries poster presentations page.
  • Check the list of UAB Libraries Databases for other sources. NewsBank Access World News Research Collection and Regional Business News databases also contain news resources.

 

Dive Into Tutorials

Once you have found a general area of interest, take a more in-depth look at the topic by constructing a "smart" and efficient search of scholarly literature using the resources below.

 

Conduct a Literature Review

The next step is to conduct a literature review, which means that you'll compile research that has already been done on a topic area. The databases below provide access to articles conducted by more accredited scholars and researchers.

  • UAB Libraries list of databases
  • Gale Academic OneFile — contains peer-reviewed, full-text journals and reference sources with millions of articles available in both PDF and text formats.
  • PubMed — the premiere database of medical literature. Allows you to search MEDLINE, an online index of biomedical journal article citations from 1950 to present.
  • Scopus — an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources from 1996-present.

 

Locate Books

Gather books that are written about your subject from the library. You can always use interlibrary loan to get the book or article that you need not currently available in the library.

  • UAB Library Catalog — a catalog search will show you the location, format, call number, and status of all library resources.
  • Interlibrary Loan — the library gets articles or books for you that are not in their collection.
    • The Document Delivery service sends you electronic copies of articles from UAB Libraries print journal collection, saving you time and money at the copy machine.

 

Shape Up Your Citations

Properly cite the information in your paper to give the authors of the work you are referencing proper credit. Each discipline uses its own citation style

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