1.1 Researching biography: who is douglas sladen?  (Page 3/8)

We see Who's Who, which should be expected, as well as what appears to be an autobiography.

By clicking on the title of the work we are presented with a all of the information we would need to locate the book in other librariesourselves, if we had to. Fortunately we are also granted the option to have this book delivered directly to us via interlibrary loan department, justunder the Get This Item heading.

For more on how to complete an interlibrary loan request, please see Borrowing Resources through Interlibrary Loan: Illiad .Now that a proper autobiography is on the way, there are a few other resourcesat the library to explore before we move on.

Looking in journals and newspapers for articles about your author

Articles published in journals or newspapers (or "periodicals") can be a valuable resource for any research project. If you are doing historical research,periodicals from the period you are examining can be invaluable primary source materials, since they reveal how people during the time were thinking and furnishdetailed accounts of events. You will also find periodicals to be useful secondary source materials, as scholars often will published focused analyses of a particularissue or event in academic journals.

Articles are not listed separately in the library catalog like books. Instead, you must search a specialized periodical index, such as Nineteenth Century Masterfile for primary source materials or Historical Abstracts for secondary source materials. If we find the title or abstractof an article in the databases, but not the full text, we may then look in the library catalog to see if that particular journal title is available.Considering the number of journals and newspapers in the world, there's a good possibility that your author or his or her work has been discussed in print.The indexes for many journals and newspapers are available online. You can also access some materials through full-text online archives, which make available notonly bibliographic information but also the complete text of the article.

The typical research library (such as one found at a university) provides access to a wide variety of online journals and databases. Each database isunique in terms of content and search options and you will have to explore each one by one. However, as you become acquainted with the different styles you will findthat learning one will invariably benefit you in learning others. We will explore several of these databases in this section as an introduction to accessing andproductively searching their contents as well as procuring the material we need from them.

How to access the online journals, newspapers and databases