" /> Reference Transactions: December 2006 Archives

« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

December 12, 2006

New Orleans and Mardi Gras

A student has to write a news story over the break on conditions in New Orleans and, in particular, their relationship to Mardi Gras.

In addition to assurance about off-campus access to databases, I suggested the following starting points:


From what I can see in LexisNexis Academic and in Academic OneFile, there is a lot of material in newspapers and magazines on conditions in New Orleans.

LexisNexis Academic
Step One: "General News"
Step Two: "Major Papers"
Step Three: "new orleans" [first line]
crime OR neighborhood OR transportation [second line; you can try other terms, too]
katrina [third line]
Step Four: [You may or may not choose to limit this search to "Previous Month" because of the large number of articles.]
When I did this search (6 months), I got 758 articles, almost all of which will be provided in full-text form. Note: The Times-Picayune will be heavily represented.

Academic OneFile
first line: "new orleans"
second line: katrina
third line: neighborhood* OR crime OR transportation OR roads [You can try other terms, too.]
Important note: When viewing results, be sure to click on the "Magazines" and "News" tabs above the list, as well as the default "Academic Journals" list. In general, Academic OneFile probably will be less useful than LexisNexis for this research.

December 5, 2006

Rockbridge County data

A student needs an overview of socioeconomic and demographic data on Lexington and Rockbridge County.
Census Bureau -- American Factfinder

December 1, 2006

Supreme Court Clerks

A law student wants to find any information she can on the first three U.S. Supreme Court clerks (although they were not called "clerks" at the time). The time period is the second half of the 19th century and they all were from Massachusetts.

Interesting aside: The student is working with W&L alum Todd Peppers, who is now a professor at Roanoke College and the author of a recent (and the first?) book on Supreme Court clerks.

Possibilities:

Historical New York Times
Historical Washington Post
Periodical Index Online
America: History and Life
WorldCat
NUCMC
Google, etc.
LexisNexis
DAB
National Cyclopedia of American Biography

Using Mass Media for Birth Control Education

A JOUR 101 student is writing a paper on the presentation of birth control (or population policy or contraception) in the mass media, with the intention of preparing (for another course) a viable strategy for using mass media for such a purpose in a particular African country.
Here is the research guide.