Freshman Seminar

Online Catalog

Use NUcat (the online catalog) to identify books that the library has, as well as journal titles, microfilm, videos, and other catalogued material. Books are excellent sources of overviews and substantial material on a particular topic, but do not necessarily reflect the most current events. NUcat will also tell you whether material is in the main library or in another Northwestern University library.

A good way to find materials about an author in NUcat is to do a subject heading search. For example, a subject heading search on o'brien, tim would bring up subject headings such as:

O'Brien, Tim, 1946 Criticism and interpretation.
O'Brien, Tim, 1946 Technique.

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924 Criticism and interpretation.
Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924 Philosophy

When doing keyword searches in NUcat, the truncation symbol is "?". For example: kafka and philosoph?.

Other Library Catalogs

WorldCat
Catalogs from Other Libraries

To obtain materials from other libraries contact the Interlibrary Loan Department.


Selected Indexes to Articles

Use indexes to track down articles in journals. Articles usually have a specific focus, are relatively short, and are very current. Some indexes, particularly the general ones, include the full text of the article. You can find the indexes by going to the library's home page and selecting "Electronic Resources." Type in the name of the index that you need from the "Quick Search" menu. (The truncation symbol used in the indexes listed below is "*". For example, hawthorne and religio*.)



If the article citations you find in indexes to do not include full text, click on Find it @ NU which searches across many other indexing databases and sources of full text articles to find electronic full text of the article, if it exists, in the NU Library electronic environment. Find it @ NU will also lead to NUcat, the online catalog, if only a paper copy exists for the journal or periodical. If an item is not found in electronic or paper copy, a link to Interlibrary Loan will be given.

You can also locate the full article by directly searching on the journal title, not the article title, in NUcat. You can then check to see whether the library owns the journal or periodical and if so, what issues/dates are owned and in what format (hard copy, electronic, microtext).

General Indexes
Academic Search Premier
Full text and abstracts of scholarly journal articles and general interest news and literature.

Expanded Academic Index (EXAC)
Selected full text and abstracts of articles in journals across a variety of disciplines.

Specialized Indexes
MLA International Bibliography
Citations and abstracts covering literature, language, linguistics and folklore.

Humanities Abstracts
Citations and abstracts to articles in more than 450 humanities periodicals.

Sociological Abstracts
Citations and abstracts of articles in sociology journals and related fields.

Historical Abstracts -- America: History and Life
Citations and abstracts covering world history.

Sources of Information about Authors
Literature Resource Center
Literature Resource Center includes criticism, biographies, bibliographies, work overviews and explications, Web sites, periodical articles, and reading lists.

Dictionary of Literary Biography. Main Reference. Encyclopedia Cases.

Find other indexes to articles by subject


Putting it all together

MLA Style Guide (from The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue)

Reference Help

Northwestern University Library's Main Reference Department

Accessing electronic articles and books from off campus

Start with the instructions at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/help/proxy/index.html

Natalie Pelster
Reference Department
Email:n-pelster@northwestern.edu
Office phone: 847.491.8735
Reference desk phone: 847.491.7656