History 350: Chicana/o Experience in the Borderlands

Books in the CSUSM collection are generally scholarly secondary sources but can provide access or leads to primary sources as well. For this assignment, you can use articles or a book chapter or selection from an anthology. Anthologies are books with a number of different scholars contributing different chapters.

To find a book:

1. Choose BOOKS & MORE tab on the library main page as your search option.
2. Type words into the search box that appropriately describe your topic (one to two words is best)
3. If you get more than 20 hits, use some limiters to reduce the number of items to browse (books only, date published, language are all useful ways to limit the list) 
4. Examine the results list.
5. Open a title that sounds relevant and review the contents description. If the book is in chapters or an anthology, each chapter/contribution should be noted.
6. Books may be in hard copy for check out or e-book format to read online.

Taking the search further:

1. If you find a useful book, look at the subject headings to find more relevant titles.
2. Click on any one of the subject headings and the search results will be all works with this tag.
3. Need even more? Try other terms that also describe your topic.

Note: Subject heading searches can be repeated in  CSU+, WorldCat and LCSH-friendly databases like Project Muse.

SECONDARY SOURCE EXAMPLE (looking for 'zoot suit')

PRIMARY SOURCE EXAMPLE (note in Contents list a number of primary source items)

The Library Catalog is the place to search first. Why? Because the librarian in collaboration with the History faculty has carefully selected most of the collection for quality and relevance to our disciplines. Some ebook titles come in packages so not every title is individually selected but the ebook vendors we deal with are chosen for the overall quality of the publishers they source titles from. 

See the video clip below on searching the library catalog and limiting to ebook format. Some titles will need the Libby app downloaded and if you use the public library, you may already have this app installed. 

If you find something in our print collection--due concerns about everyone's safety, our print materials are not available for check out and sadly, the stacks are not open to browsing (a favorite pastime of historians.) Never fear! The library has put procedures in place to get what you need in digital versions for touch-free access whenever possible. Details on ordering books is in the Getting Full Text Materials page. In addition to mailing hard copy materials to your home, we also offer Digitization on Demand (DoD.) Place a request and the Interlibrary Loan staff will be in touch to let you know how we can get you what you need.   

There are a number of history-focused databases and I strongly advise searching individual databases rather than using the Articles+ search. Articles+ searches ALL of our full text databases and will return a lot of irrelevant hits. Since you are doing history research, use the specific history tools!

GET IT is the link to try if you find an article citation but not the full text. GET IT will search for that specific article through all our databases and link to the full text if we have it.

No full text? We can get it for you through Interlibrary Loan which should be an option offered if the text is not available. Free and amazingly quick as it comes through your campus account.