Resources for Rhetoric Students

Finding books, videos and magazines/journals
The InfoHawk Catalog
Use the UI library catalog to find books, to determine if the library subscribes to a particular journal or magazine, and to find videos, DVDs, and other materials.

Finding magazine, journal and newspaper articles, and TV news broadcasts

Below are just some of the many ways you can find articles. Other indexes and databases can be found through Find & Search Resources.

• EBSCOhost: Academic Search Elite
  Academic Search Elite is a powerful database that indexes articles from both popular magazines and scholarly journals. Subject areas covered include biological sciences, economics, communications, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts and literature, medical sciences, women's studies, and general interest. It also provides indexing for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.
• LexisNexis Academic Universe
  This is an index that “provides access to a wide range of news, business, legal research, medical and reference information. The news section provides access to full text of newspapers from the U.S., Europe, Africa, North and South America and Australia in English, as well as some in Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish; news wires, television and radio transcripts are also available.” Allows searching for specific titles including The New York Times and Washington Post.
• Access World News
  Newspaper collections from NewsBank provide full-text articles from the electronic editions for over 600 U.S. and over 700 international newspapers. Includes: The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Des Moines Register (1/1/1999 - current), and The Washington Post (1/1/1977 - current).
• The New York Times--Proquest Historical Newspapers
  Contains full-text access to the New York Times dating from 1851 (New York Daily Times) to the present. Documents display in PDF
• Readers' Guide Retrospective
  For older articles from popular magazines, try this source. It covers the years 1890 through 1982.
• Gender Watch
  A full text database that contains periodicals, academic journals, newsletters, magazines, regional publications and government reports focused on gender and women's issues.
• Alt-Press Watch
  Full-text database indexes over 250 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. Includes selected abstracts from research journals.
• Ethnic News Watch
  Ethnic NewsWatch is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
  

Finding Information on Controversial Issues
Two of the many ways to find information on controversial issues are listed below.

• Issues and Controversies
  Provides you with “up-to-date, in-depth and objective information on the most prominent and hotly debated issues of the day.” Coverage on the Web goes back to September 1995. The print version covers 1998 to present. Ask a librarian for help locating and using the print version.
• CQ Researcher
  Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology. The CQ Researcher Web site offers online access to issues dating back to October 25, 1991. The print version is in the Main Reference Alcoves, call number H35.C78.

Evaluating Information
These sites offer some criteria to aid students as they evaluate information.

• Evaluating Resources on the World Wide Web
  A UI Libraries handout of key points to consider when evaluating information found on the Web.
• Evaluating Information: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask
  Created by librarians at The University of California Berkeley.

 

For more information, please contact: Kathy Magarrell, Head, Reference and Library Instruction Main Library, The University of Iowa Libraries Tel. (319) 335-5093

last edited: 2/22/08