FYS 100 Civic Journalism and Social Justice (Mullen)

Library Research Guide for Professor Mullen's FYS

Where to Start Searching:

OneSearch is the library catalog, there you can search almost everything in the library at once- books, media, news sources, scholarly journals, and more.

Library databases are smaller collections of scholarly articles, news sources, images, media and more, which may be organized thematically on different topics.

Google Scholar - a resource for both scholarly and non-scholarly articles. If you are on campus, you will find links to scholarly articles in our databases.

Search Tips:

Brainstorm a few key words or phrases to help get you started. These could be people, places, or topics.
Decide what types of resources you are looking for (books, chapters, scholarly articles, news, etc.) and use the appropriate filters.
Limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed work if desired using the filters.
Look at the library's other research guides on different topics and types of sources including the news, journalism, Richmond, and polls, data and statistics guides.
If you can't find an article or book you need, check out our service called interlibrary loan - we can request materials from other libraries if we don't have them at UR

Find News Sources

New York Times (Website) This link opens in a new window
*Redeem a code and create an account using your UR email address to access the New York Times' website. Your account will be active for 26 weeks, after which you will need to repeat the process and redeem the code again. Note: If you have a current paid New York Times subscription, cancel your paid subscription, prior to redeeming the code and registering. Our subscription does NOT contain access to Games or Cooking. Once registered, you will have access to the New York Times articles from 1851-present. For the date range 1923-1980, users are limited to 5 accesses per day. Note: Web-only content is not linked in OneSearch. You must access the website directly for those articles. (New York Times)
Newspaper Source Plus This link opens in a new window
Search for newspaper articles from hundreds of national and regional newspapers, as well as transcripts of television and radio news. (EBSCO)
International Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Search for articles from news sources outside of the US and Canada, such as newspapers, newswires, transcripts, and digital-only news sites. (ProQuest)
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Search for newspaper articles and legal materials such as court cases, legislation, statutes, regulations, law reviews, and more. (Lexis-Nexis)
Newswires This link opens in a new window
Access near real-time news from the past 30 days from the Associated Press, United Press International, CNN Wire, and Business Wire. (EBSCO)
Access World News (Historical and Current) This link opens in a new window
Search for articles from thousands of US and global news sources. It includes some audio and video news sources, as well as traditional newspapers. (Newsbank/Readex)
Washington Post (Website) This link opens in a new window
*Follow these instructions to create an account with your Richmond email address. Read articles published on Washingonpost.com. You must both verify your email address and activate your subscription after creating your account. If you do not see your account name, try disabling all ad blockers in your browser. Note: Web-only content is not linked in OneSearch. You must access the website directly for those articles. (Washington Post)

(Look up articles about Richmond's Confederate monuments)

Find Scholarly Articles

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Search for journal articles on most topics. This multi-disciplinary database is a good place to start if you don't know where else to begin. (EBSCO)
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Search for journal articles on topics in the arts, humanities, social sciences and some math/science. Most journals have volumes/issues dating from the 19th century to within 3-5 years of present day. (ITHAKA)
Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
Search for journal articles on topics related to communication, linguistics, mass media, and journalism. (EBSCO)
Political Science Complete This link opens in a new window
Search for journal articles on topics related to political science, political theory, political behavior, public policy, law, international relations, comparative politics, and non-governmental organizations. (EBSCO)

Scholarly articles can help us provide more context to our journalistic research. Maybe we need a sociological study about income inequality or a medical journal article to talk about the pandemic for instance. What do we mean when we say "scholarly sources"?

Scholarly writing or academic scholarship tends to come from people (like your professors) producing knowledge and engaging in conversation with fellow scholars in their field.

Find Photos and Images

Artstor This link opens in a new window
Access thousands of images from art, architecture, archaeology, decorative arts and design, and visual culture in general. The content comes from museums, individual photographers, scholars, special collections at libraries, and photo archives. (ITHAKA)

(Look up images of Confederate monuments)

Reference Sources

eBook Collection (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Search for ebooks that provide a broad overview of many topics. The database includes mostly reference works, such as encyclopedias, almanacs, yearbooks, handbooks, and more. (Gale)

In the beginning of your research, it's helpful to learn just enough about the topic to get a basic overview. When we start out, we don't know enough yet to really dive into the details so we often turn to Wikipedia. We can gain a lot of information from encyclopedias, dictionaries, and short biographical profiles (which we call reference sources), before turning to lengthier books and scholarly articles. You can find our reference resources listed on our databases page, or by searching the library catalog Onesearch using the filter for "reference entries".