The Five College Online Library Catalog allows you to search for books and other items at Mt. Holyoke, Amherst, Hampshire, Smith, UMass Amherst, or all five colleges. If you find a book that's available at Mt. Holyoke, note the location and call number and use the Getting Around in LITS guide to locate the item in the library building. If you can't find a book in Mt. Holyoke's library collection but it is available at one of the other colleges, you can request the book through the catalog's Request Item feature. For a series of online tutorials explaining how to use the catalog see the Five College Catalog Overview web page.

Searching for Articles using Databases

The library catalog, while it will tell you which library has a journal title and for which years, doesn't contain information about the individual articles within each journal issue. Instead, there are several article databases that may be used for finding articles. A selection of article databases appropriate for this class is listed below. Some databases contain the full text of journal articles while others only contain journal article citations. In the latter case, once you've identified an article that you'd like to read and the journal in which it was published, you must check the Five-College Library Catalog to determine if the article is available in print. If it is available in print but the journal is held at one of the Five Colleges other than Mt. Holyoke, you can request that a copy of the article be sent to you via Interlibrary Loan using the ILiad web form.

for literary criticism

• Contemporary Literary Criticism Selection of over 17,000 full-text critical essays on contemporary authors.
• MLA Bibliography/Modern Language Association (1926 - ) Bibliographic citations covering scholarly work in literature, linguistics, and folklore, and the dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater) worldwide. Sources include journal and book articles, dissertations, monographs, and series.index to the critical scholarship on literature.

for film criticism

• Film and Television Literature Index (1976 - ) Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews. The database will provide cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 300 publications (and selected coverage of 301), as well as full text for more than 90 journals.

for international and African affairs

• Current Bibliography on African Affairs - Z 3501 C8 REF. Interdisciplinary index to journal articles, newspapers, government and organizational reports and more from African and international sources.
• PAIS International/Public Affairs Information Service Indexes articles, books, conference proceedings, and government documents. Available online for literature published since 1972 and in paper (H 1 P3 Ref) from 1915.

for history

• Historical Abstracts (1954 - ) Indexes and abstracts scholarly literature on the history of the world (except the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present. The subject coverage includes all branches of world history; related social sciences and humanities disciplines when books, articles, or dissertations in these areas are presented with an historical perspective; and the historical profession.

for women's studies

• Contemporary Women's Issues (1992 - present) Citation index to global information on women with some full text. Indexes over 1500 periodicals, including journals, newsletters, research reports from non-profit groups, government and international agencies. Includes references to gray literature and other sources that are not as easily found in mainstream sources. Updated weekly.
• Women's Studies International (1972-present) Covers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research, including Women Studies Abstracts (formerly only available in print) and the Women of Color and Southern Women Bibliography. Women's Studies International supports curriculum development in the areas of sociology, history, political science & economy, public policy, international relations, arts & humanities, business and education. Nearly 800 essential sources include: journals, newspapers, newsletters, bulletins, books, book chapters, proceedings, reports, theses, dissertations, NGO studies, important websites & web documents, and grey literature. Over 2,000 periodical sources are represented. Updated quarterly.

for multiple disciplines

• Academic Search Premier (Ebsco) (1975 - ) Scholarly, multi-disciplinary database containing full text for nearly 4,650 serials, including more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications. Also offers indexing and abstracts for more than 8,200 journals. Disciplines covered include arts & literature, international affairs, political science, and women's studies.
• JStor (from first issue of each journal to within 1 - 5 years of present) Full text of back issues of scholarly journals from all disciplines, some citation information for newer issues. If you use the Advanced search form, it's possible to limit your search to journals in specific disciplines. Disciplines useful for this course include African Studies, Feminist & Women's Studies, Film Studies, Language & Literature, and Political Science.

News and Media Resources

• allAfrica.com From AllAfrica Global Media "a multi-media content service provider... and the largest electronic distributor of African news and information worldwide." Posts "over 1000 stories daily in English and French . . . as well as over 900,000 articles in our searchable archive (which includes the archive of Africa News Service dating from 1997)."
• African Newspapers on the Internet A list by country of African newspapers available online. Click on the "News (Continent-wide)" for online sources covering all of Africa. From the Stanford University Libraries Africa South of the Sahara web site.
• AfricaFocusIndependent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter, a writer, researcher, and activist focusing particularly on southern Africa and international issues.
• AP Multimedia Archive Digitized photos, some dating as far back as 1826, from Associated Press photojournalists. Also included are audio files dating from the 1920s and news stories and headlines dating from 1997. Note: sometimes this database will not load properly within ella. If you click on the AP Multimedia Archive link and nothing happens, open another web browser window and copy and paste the URL http://www.mtholyoke.edu/cgi/net/do-ezproxy?apphoto into the address box and hit Enter. Unless too many users are already logged on, the datbase should open.
• LexisNexis Full-text of recent years of domestic and foreign newspapers and some television transcripts. Search tip: To target non-US news sources about Africa, take the following steps - Click on the News tab in the upper left corner of the search screen, in the Add Index Terms section, click on "Show" link, in the Region box that appears click in the box labeled "Africa," in the Sources drop-down menu, select "Non-US Newspapers and Wires," use the Specify Date drop-down menu select a specific date, date range, or number of months or years in the past to search.
• ProQuest newspaper databases This database includes a series of current and historical U.S. newspaper titles. Use the "Database" menu to select "News - Proquest Newspapers" to search current papers, or to select any of the "News - Historical" papers.  The first selection covers current news and, depending upon the paper, goes back as far as 16 - 26 years. Included are such titles as the New York Times (1980 - present), the Chicago Tribune (1985 - present), and the Los Angeles Times (1985 - present). The historical papers go back to the nineteenth century. These include the New York Times (1851-2003), the Chicago Tribune (1849-1985), and the Los Angeles Times (1881-1985). Search tip: you can use the "Select multiple databases" link to simultaneously select and search more than one newspaper title but it is not possible to search both current and Historical Databases at the same time. Make sure you click "Clear all databases" to uncheck the current databases before selecting and searching any of the Historical Databases.
• World News Connection (1995 - ) Information is compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper articles, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts, periodicals, and non-classified technical reports.

Related Research Guides

• African and African American Studies
• English Language & Literature
• Film Studies
• International Affairs
• History
• Gender Studies
• Poisonwood Bible Guide (Common Reading 2003)

• Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources Extensive annotated list of links.  From Stanford University Libraries.
• Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent Digitized collection of teaching and research materials collected by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff.  Includes "more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs, 50 hours of sounds from forty-five different countires, as well as a large number of difficult to find texts that librarians, scholars, and other subject specialists have deemed important to these fields of study."
• Gefame: Journal of African Studies A still relatively rare example of a freely-available, Web-born, peer-reviewed journal.  Published by the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan University Library in collaboration with the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

• Five critieria for evaluating Web pagesFrom the Cornell University Library.
• When to Cite Sources? From Dartmouth College's "Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement"
• Research and Documentation Online version of Diana Hacker's Research and Documentation in the Electronic Age.  See the Humanities: Documenting Sources section for examples of how to do MLA style in-text citations and works cited lists.
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th edition
  MH/Main Reference LB2369 .G53 2003
• The Research Paper and the World Wide Web
  MH/Main Reference LB 2369 .R585 2000

• A few examples from Politics 116 (2004-2005): Terrorism and Children in Sudan, Congo: Lumumba, Mobutu, and the CIA, The Boer War of South Africa, Ghana, Curse of the Kari

Contact Mary Stettner, library liaison to English, or try Ask A Librarian.