Courtesy of www.nelson-atkins.org

Last February, Mason librarian Joy Suh educated our class on using the GMU library tools for our stories. Her “Library_Resources_for_Comm_361”  PowerPoint is loaded with such advice, including a reference to using journal databases for supplementary research on our topics.

Suh mentioned several databases and elaborated on their significance. These included LexisNexis Academic, JSTOR.

LexixNexis Academic is a resource for students to locate past newspaper articles and breakdowns of legal cases, according to Suh. This service has a specific focus on topics of legality.

“LexisNexis Academic helps students and faculty members at colleges and universities save valuable research time by offering them quick, easy access to more than 15,000 of the most credible business, legal, and news sources available in a single location,” according to their website proclamation.

The JSTOR  resource, meanwhile, has a much broader focus. This database contains a plethora of  journal articles that cover a wide range of topics. These articles are accessed through a clean, simple interface that makes it even more inviting for students.

These attributes could explain its apparent popularity. According to the site’s about page, there were a 151 million searches conducted last year using the database.

LexisNexis and JSTOR are just two of the useful databases that Suh introduced in her presentation.  Check out the rest of her PowerPoint for more golden nuggets!