Getting ready for finals: ACC Library resources can help!

Stressed about finals? ACC Libraries have resources available for you so that you feel ready to take on finals week! Check out a few of them here:

If you are working on a paper or presentation:

If you're having trouble formatting your paper or presentation, we have a Tech Toolbox that can help. The Toolbox is full of hints and tips for using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs, and Blackboard. All of our ACC Libraries have PCs loaded with Microsoft Office Software for you to work on, so come in and get to work! 

Need citation help?

Take a look at our citation style guides. The style you will need to use for your paper depends on your instructor. ACC takes Academic Integrity seriously. If you need help understanding what plagiarism is, check out our online tutorial on Academic Honesty and Plagiarism.

Speaking of Tutorials...

Our online tutorials can help you learn more about how to search for information, build a research paper, or evaluate information you find. The tutorials are interactive, and you can practice skills that will help you in lots of different areas of study. Check them out!

We've got books:

ACC Libraries have books you can check out that cover different topics that can be helpful around finals. Here are some suggestions:

Stress Management

Study Skills

Exam Prep

Ask a Librarian!

We have a real live librarian you can chat with 24/7. Whether you're pulling an all-nighter, or just don't want to come in to the library in person, you can always find someone to chat with online. If in person help is your thing, come and see us. When the library is open, we have expert Faculty Reference Librarians available to help you at the Reference Desk. Our Librarians can help you find a book, sources for your assignment, and figure out citations. Not sure if it's a question we can answer? Ask it anyway! We're here to help.

JSTOR

JSTOR's logo. JSTOR stands for "Journal Storage."

Want to impress your professor by using scholarly sources for your paper or project? Including articles from the JSTOR database in your research could do just that!

JSTOR indexes thousands of scholarly publications, especially in the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. JSTOR also provides millions of pages of full-text, including primary source documents and books as well as journal articles, some written well over a century ago.*

Are you still trying to decide the specific topic for your paper or report? By searching a general topic in JSTOR, you are likely to discover all sorts of more specific topics that you can pursue.

For example, suppose you wish to celebrate the anniversary of King Henry V's coronation at Westminster Abbey on April 9, 1413, and you decide to write about Shakespeare's play Henry V. But what exactly about this play would you write? JSTOR includes so many different takes on Henry V, it might be difficult to choose!

Is this a rabbit, or a duck?

Some articles that JSTOR has indexed are seminal works in a particular scholarly area of interest, such as Norman Rabkin's highly influential "Rabbits, Ducks, and Henry V," which discusses Shakespeare's ambiguous portrayal of the English king. Likewise, when Henry V was crowned king during a snow storm, some interpreted it as a good sign, while others saw it as a bad one.

Suppose you have an assignment to write a book review. JSTOR has thousands of book reviews to serve as models for writing one. In fact, JSTOR has a box that you can check to limit search results just to reviews (illustrated in the example below)!

This search filter can come in handy for other types of reviews as well. For example, perhaps for a paper on a play the information sources required by your professor include a review of an actual performance of that play. JSTOR is very likely to have reviews of several different productions of the play (as long as it debuted more than five years ago).*

Searching JSTOR:

From the library home page at library.austincc.edu, click on the A-Z List of Databases link just below the long search box.

1.  At the alphabetical sequence near the top of the page, click on the J.
2.  Click on the JSTOR link. (If off campus, you will then need to log in.)
3.  Below the search box that appears, click on the Advanced Search link.

4.  Enter search terms in the search boxes that appear.
5.  From the drop down menu to the right of each search box, select the field in which each search term will be searched.
6.  To add search boxes, click on the Add a search box button below the last search box.
7.  Narrow by item types, such as articles, by clicking on the appropriate check boxes.
8.  Narrowing the search further by date, language, etc. is usually unnecessary.  When you are ready to execute your search, click on the Search button.

For more information on searching JSTOR, please feel free to consult with an ACC librarian. JSTOR also offers excellent guidance. JSTOR's tutorials include basic and advanced searching techniques, sorting and reviewing search results, and using JSTOR on a mobile device. Have fun exploring the wealth of scholarly resources JSTOR offers!


Note:

* Full-text coverage in JSTOR varies from publication to publication.  For most periodicals, an embargo on the most recent five years of articles is in effect. That is, JSTOR often indexes a periodical up to the present without providing full-text to the periodical’s most recent five years of articles. For more recent articles, you may wish to search some of the other great databases that ACC's libraries provide.