This virtual handout is intended as an overview of library resources and services of particular relevance for Domenica DelPrete’s Spring 2015 course A&HL 4500, Advanced Language Study: Academic Writing. These e-resources have been selected to support the aim of the course, i.e., to help nonnative speakers of English as well as all graduate students who wish to develop more powerful and precise and academic writing skills, and more generally to reflect the range of research resources available to all members of the Teachers College community. This blog post also includes a section describing research consultation and assistance services and options for document retrieval and delivery available to all members of the Teachers College community.
Library Resources
Online Catalogs
Periodical Indexes
Federated Search Engines
Dictionaries
Encyclopedias
E-Collections (Text, Images, Sound)
Handbooks of Research
Reviews of Research
Citation Indexes
Tests and Measurements
Digital Archives
Bibliography and Citation Management Programs
Library Services and Publications
All students, faculty, and researchers also have access to a number of important library services and publications provided to support and facilitate research and study in their particular programs and disciplines.
Online Catalogs
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are the official subject terms prescribed by the Library of Congress for the cataloging of books and are in use in essentially all academic libraries. To find works pertaining to subjects relating to the essentials of English, academic writing, and related subjects, it may be useful to use some of the subject terms, or combinations of terms, listed below when searching the online catalogs of libraries at Teachers College, Columbia University, and other institutions.
Academic writing
Academic writing — Problems, exercises, etc.
English language — Grammar
English language — Rhetoric
English language — Style
Exposition (Rhetoric)
Persuasion (Rhetoric)
Report writing
Report writing — Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Research — Methodology — Problems, exercises, etc.
EDUCAT – The most definitive record of the holdings of the Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College, including books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.
See our library’s video tutorial on searching EDUCAT.
CLIO – A union catalog of Columbia University Libraries (exclusive of the libraries of Teachers College, the Columbia Law School, and Jewish Theological Seminary), providing the most definitive record of individual libraries’ holdings of books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.
WorldCat – A union catalog of the contents of over 10,000 libraries worldwide, providing the means to do exhaustive searching by author, title, subject, and numerous other criteria and to find locations for specific items in libraries nearby and elsewhere.
See our library’s video tutorial on searching WorldCat.
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Periodical Indexes
Academic Search Premier – A multidisciplinary database providing full text for more than 4,600 journals, including nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals. See also Academic Search Complete, a scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) – Listings of articles, books, reviews, etc., on British, American, and Commonwealth literature; selective full-text.
BHI: British Humanities Index – indexes over 320 international humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK. Topics include architecture, archaeology, art, antiques, education, economics, foreign affairs, environment, cinema, current affairs, gender studies, history, language, law, linguistics, literature, music, painting, philosophy, poetry, political science, religion, and theatre.
ERIC – Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related periodical literature, ERIC (which stands for Educational Resources Information Center) provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books, and monographs. In addition to this version, made available via the ProQuest platform, ERIC is also accessible via the U.S. government ERIC site and through Ebsco ERIC.
Education Full Text – Provides comprehensive coverage of an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs, and yearbooks. Indexing coverage begins June 1983; abstracts are included beginning spring 1994; full text of some journals is available beginning in January 1996.
Education Index Retro – Provides cover-to-cover indexing for an international range of English-language periodicals and yearbooks; coverage from 1929 through mid-1983.
Education Research Complete – Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,200 journals, and includes full text for nearly 500 books and monographs.
Essay & General Literature Index – Indexes essays and articles contained in collections of essays and miscellaneous works published in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada; areas covered include the humanities and social sciences, with subject coverage ranging from economics, political science, and history to criticism of literary works, drama, and film.
Humanities and Social Sciences Retro – Provides coverage of journal articles in the humanities and social sciences from 1907 through 1984.
Humanities Full Text – Abstracts, bibliographic indexing, and full text from scholarly sources and specialized magazines in the humanities. Indexing begins in 1984, full-text coverage in 1995.
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts – Abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics; coverage from 1973 to present.
MLA International Bibliography – Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Provides access to citations from worldwide publications, including periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies.
Periodicals Archive Online – Archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
ProQuest – Provides broad multidisciplinary coverage of scholarly journals, newspapers, dissertations, and other types of publications; for international coverage and access to full texts of dissertations only, search Digital Dissertations, a subset of ProQuest.
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Federated Search Engines
Quicksearch (via Columbia University Libraries) – To search the catalog, multiple periodical indexes, and other web resources simultaneously within a variety of subjects and disciplinary subcategories.
Super Search (via Gottesman Libraries) – To search some or all of our periodical indexes, plus EDUCAT and CLIO, simultaneously for books, journal articles, reports, dissertations, etc.
Google Scholar – Provides the means to search for scholarly research across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other web sites.
See our library’s Google Scholar video tutorial.
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Dictionaries
Cambridge Guide to English Usage
Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics
Merriam-Webster Dictionary (via Britannica Online)
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford Reference Online
Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus in Dictionary Form
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Encyclopedias
Dictionary of Literary Biography – Biographical essays on authors from America, Britain, and selected other countries.
Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Edition) – The 2003 version of the classic resource in education and related fields.
Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2nd Edition) – This electronic version of the 2008 edition of the Encyclopedia offers new developments, including two new volumes of research and scholarly content, in the field of language teaching and learning in the age of globalization.
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E-Collections (Text, Images, Sound)
Alexander Street Press Databases – Themed collections of print documents, video, and recorded sound across disciplines; notable databases include Alexander Street Literature (cross-searchable collections covering the literatures of place, race, and gender), American Film Scripts Online (a searchable full-text database of screenplays and shooting scripts), Dance in Video (streaming video files of dance productions and documentaries by influential performers and companies of the 20th century), North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories (personal views of what it meant to immigrate to the United States and Canada between 1880 and 1950), Opera in Video (streaming video database containing important opera performances), Theatre in Video (containing performances of the world’s leading plays and film documentaries in streaming video), and many others.
American Memory – a gateway to the Library of Congress’s collections of digitized American historical materials. The site’s mission is to provide ” free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.”
Ebrary – Online books across a range of subject areas; searchable, under All Subjects, by Fine Arts; History (General) and History of Europe; Language and Literature; Music and Books on Music; Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, etc., and various sub-topics, and by author, title, and other criteria.
JSTOR – An online archive of over 1,200 leading scholarly journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles.
Literature Online (LION) – Fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 260 full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
National Council of Teachers of English Journals – Journals published by the NCTE with content reflecting current research, trends, and strategies, including Language Arts, English Journal, College English, and Research in the Teaching of English.
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Handbooks of Research
Blackwell Reference Online – Provides full-text access to reference works in the humanities, social sciences, and business and management, see research handbooks and companions in Art, Geography, History, Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, and other subject areas.
Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning – The electronic version of the 2005 edition of a key resource for research in second language acquisition, TESOL, and related fields in applied linguistics.
Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts – This handbook brings together state-of-the-art research and practice on the evolving view of literacy as encompassing not only reading, writing, speaking, and listening, but also the multiple ways through which learners gain access to knowledge and skills.
Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts – Sponsored by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English, this electronic version of the second (2003) edition of the printed source offers an overview of recent trends in the study and teaching of English.
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Reviews of Research
Annual Reviews – Reviews of research on topics in biomedical/life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences published as annual journals.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) – Listings of articles, books, reviews, etc., on British, American, and Commonwealth literature; selective full-text.
Review of Educational Research – A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RER publishes quarterly critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of scholarly work.
Review of Research in Education - A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RRE provides an annual overview and descriptive analysis of selected topics of relevant research literature through critical and synthesizing essays.
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Citation Indexes
Scopus – Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
See a video tutorial from Columbia University Libraries at Using Citation Analysis Tools in Scopus.
Web of Science - Comprising the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded, this database supports searching by topic, author, or publication name, and is also a major means for doing cited reference searching, to find articles that cite a person’s work.
See a video tutorial from Columbia University Libraries at Using Citation Analysis Tools in Web of Science.
Google Scholar – Provides the means to search by author or publication title, and indicates and provides links to works that have cited the documents retrieved.
See our library’s Citation Indexes video tutorial on citation searching via the Web of Science and Google Scholar.
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Tests and Measurements
Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) – Information on approximately 15,000 measurement instruments (i.e. questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, coding schemes, rating scales, etc.) in the fields of health and psychosocial sciences.
Mental Measurements Yearbook (Ovid) – Produced by the Buros Institute, this database contains extensive information about and reviews of English-language, commercially available, standardized tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas, as included in the printed Mental Measurements Yearbooks.
For further information on access to actual tests, measurements, instruments, scales, etc., see our Knowledge Database entry at http://library.tc.columbia.edu/kb/idx.php/0/196/article/.
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Digital Archives
Academic Commons – Columbia University’s online repository, where current faculty, students, and staff can deposit the results of their scholarly work and research.
PocketKnowledge – The social archive of Teachers College, including unpublished manuscripts and archives from the library’s collections, documents from other departments and administrative offices College-wide, and the work of TC students, faculty, and researchers.
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Bibliography and Citation Management Programs
Citation Management Software – An extensive description of and guide to the use of BibDesk, EndNote, Papers, Mendeley, and Zotero, including a comparison of their relative merits, produced by the Columbia University Libraries’ Digital Science Center.
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Library Services and Publications
Ask a Librarian a Question – To explore a variety of kinds of research support: submit an email reference query to librarians onsite; request a research consultation with a Gottesman librarian; review frequently asked questions via the library’s Knowledge Database.
E-Reserves – Provides online access to digital course readings, including e-journal articles and book chapters, as well as call numbers for physical course reserves materials (books, DVDs, videos, etc.).
Document Delivery – The means to recommend items for purchase and/or to request from other libraries materials (dissertations, book chapters, journal articles, etc.) not available through the Gottesman or Columbia University Libraries.
Learning at the Library – The Gottesman Libraries’ blog via the Pressible platform, including content in many topical areas contributed by library staff members.
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