University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

There are a number of ways to get in touch with our reference desk staff if you have questions in the course of your research. For an overview of these contact options, please see the Research Assistance Page.

For information on how to set up your citations, please see the Cofrin Library's citation information page.

To find journal and magazine articles:

Many business databases contain significant information regarding public and nonprofit organizations and their management. Many management issues have counterparts in the for-profit sector, so don't discount more general management articles.

• ABI/INFORM Global
  Description : Indexes and abstracts over 1300 scholarly and trade business journals. Popular magazines such as Fortune, Forbes and Time are included. Full-text articles for over 600 journal titles are available online.
  Coverage: 1971 -
  
  
• Business Source Premier
  Description : Provides comprehensive access to abstracts and indexing for over 2,300 titles, including The Wall Street Journal.
  Coverage: 1886 -

• Business Full Text
  Description : Indexes and abstracts 400 English language general business periodicals and trade journals, plus the Wall Street Journal and the business section of the New York Times. Topics include management, accounting, advertising and marketing, construction, entertainment and media, information technology, mergers and acquisitions, occupational health and safety, public relations, small business, and a great deal of corporate information.
  Coverage: 1982 -

• Emerald Full Text
  Description : Contains 35,000 articles from over 100 management journals, complete with full text archives back to 1994. Covers the major management disciplines including strategy, leadership, information management, marketing and human resource management.
  Coverage: 1994 - present (varies by title) 

• Academic Search Complete from EbscoHost - Description : Gain access to information from a wide range of academic areas including literature and language.
  Coverage: varies from title to title, but approximately 1887 to the present.
  

• Social Sciences Full Text
  Description: Indexes and abstracts over 400 English language periodicals. Topics include anthropology, area studies, community health and medical care, criminal justice and criminology, economics, family studies, geography, gerontology, international relations, law, minority studies, planning and public administration, policy sciences, political science, psychiatry, psychology, social work and public welfare, sociology, urban studies, women's studies, and related subjects.
  Coverage: 1983 -

• PsycINFO
  Description: PsycINFO (R) contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
  Coverage: 1872 -

Key Journals

American Review of Public Administration

International Journal of Public Administration

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory; J-PART

Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory (Transaction)

Midwest Review of Public Administration

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly    www.arnova.org

Nonprofit Management and Leadership  www.case.edu/mandelcenter

Nonprofit Quarterly  http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/

Public Administration

Public Administration and Management

Public Administration & Development

Public Administration Quarterly

Public Administration Review

Stanford Social Innovation Review   www.ssireview.org

To Find Newspaper articles:

• Lexis Nexis Academic
  escription : Academic Universe provides access to nearly 5,000 publication on a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.
  Coverage: 1990-
  

• Newspaper Source Plus
  Description: Newspaper Source Plus includes 1,520 full-text newspapers, providing more than 28 million full-text articles. In addition, the database features
  more than 601,300 television and radio news transcripts, videos & podcasts.
  Coverage: varies.

• Note: Electronic access to the Green Bay Press Gazette has changed. If you need access to the paper, please try the Brown County Library. Please note that the public library's access may also change, and if you have questions regarding dates of coverage for the paper or how to access this resource, please contact the Brown County Library.

To Find books:

• Cofrin Library Catalog
  If you are searching for a book and you discover that Cofrin Library does not own it, you can request it through InterLibrary Loan (also called ILL or ILLiad), a service for students to get books and journal articles for other libraries. If you are unfamiliar with using InterLibrary Loan, stop by the reference desk for assistance.

• UB (Universal Borrowing) allows you to search the catalogs of all the other UW libraries and directly request that a book be sent here for your use. Typically a book requested this way arrives in about 3 working days.

• Worldcat
  Use the mega-catalog, Worldcat, to find books from other libraries. WorldCat will allow you to search over 15,000 libraries worldwide. Although the Cofrin Library may not own an item that you find in WorldCat, you can submit an interLibrary loan request from right inside the database. It can take about 5-10 days for the item to arrive so it is important that you start your research early to give yourself an opportunity to get the best resources for you research.

Other Resources:

• Alliance for Nonprofit Management    www.allianceonline.org 
  
  
• Chronicle of Philanthropy   www.philanthropy.com
  
  
• Nonprofit Online News    http://news.gilbert.org
  
  
• Nonprofit Times    www.nptimes.com 
  
  
• Alliance for np management www.allianceonline.org
  
  
• Independent Sector  www.independentsector.org
  
  

To find web sites:

• Google and Google Uncle Sam, Google Scholar

 

Determining a scholarly source:

There are a number of ways to determine if a source is scholarly, below are a couple of the key ways:

• Scholarly sources ALWAYS cite their sources in either footnotes or bibliographies
• Scholarly sources have articles written by people in the field with which the journal is concerned.
• Scholarly sources use language that assumes a certain level of scholarly background.
• Scholarly sources often contain graphs and charts, but few pictures.

 

Evaluating your sources:

No matter what type of source you are using, be it a book, article, or web site, you should look at 5 key points:

• Authority - What are the author's credentials?
• Accuracy - Compared to other sources does it seem to be giving correct information?
• Objectivity - Is there a bias or an agenda by the author?
• Currency - Is the source current enough for your needs?
• Coverage - Does the source go enough in-depth for your needs?

rev. 17 Sept 2009