Looking up Congressional Hearings is a bit tricky. Here are some tips.

You can look up Congressional Hearings using Lexis-Nexis Congressional: http://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp.

In Lexis-Nexis t’s is helpful to use the Advanced Search feature and to use limits.

Limits:

You can limit a search to hearings only, which will greatly reduce the number of hits.

If you are looking for testimony by a particular witness, you can limit a search to just witnesses (i.e. Oliver North).

You can limit by years, including limiting to a span of years, (i.e. 1950-1955).

If you know which Congress held a particular hearing, you can limit a search to just that Congress (i.e. the 95th Congress which met from 1977 to 1978).

When you find a citation to a particular hearing, click “Go to Full Text” to see the actual transcript of the hearing.

Here is a handy guide to Congressional Hearings: http://lawschool.lexis.com/infopro/zimmerman/disp.aspx?z=1324

Just because it is the night before your paper is due and you are barely starting it does not mean that it is the end of your educational career. Just because you have never used the library search engine and it is 2AM does not mean that it is over either.

Librarians from all around are available to chat with at all times. Even though our library may be closed during the evening and our librarians and your professor will probably not respond to your email until the next day, there are librarians that can be reached. If you click on the CONTACT US tab on the main library website, you should notice a widget on the right hand side of the page that says ASK A LIBRARIAN. Just follow the instructions within and you will be on your way to speaking with a librarian to assist you.

Writing 101 Course Specific
Today, I decided to look over the course specific page for Writing 101. I am currently in this course and felt that it would be good to know how to do it not only for myself (I am definitely filled with questions) but also for the other students.
PROFILE OF RESEARCH COMMUNITY
The first part of the page focuses on finding a topic. There are three links noted to help students find a topic if they are uncertain what they are looking for.
The next part is finding the appropriate resources. Links are shown for finding articles and journals, as well as books on specific areas.
Following that are links to reputable sources online.
Afterwards is a section called Major Conferences, which links to sites that have recorded conferences available.

Have you ever forgotten when your library items need to be returned but don’t want to travel all the way to campus to check?
That’s okay; there is a link available on the library website for that.
On the top of the library homepage, there is a link called My Library Account (https://ucm1200-aslib.ucmerced.edu/patroninfo).
Click on it and you will be directed to a page where you can either sign in directly and check which items have been checked out to you by using your UCM Net ID and Password, or you can check on any Inter Library Loan requests you may have made as well.

Needing to export a citation from an article you find, but wanting it in APA format?

There is a solution!

While searching through Academic Search Complete (EBSCO), click on the Preferences link just below the search box. From there, it will open up a new window, filled with various settings that can be changed within the search engine. If you scroll down to Print, Email, Save and Export, you can change the standard citation format and click on Citation Format. From there, select APA from the list. By adding in your email, you will be able to submit the citation to yourself.

If you find an eBook in our UCM Catalog, but would like to request the printed copy, you may certainly do so (:

Just search for the book using Next Generation Melvyl, click on the title, and click the yellow “Request” button. Then fill out all of your information on the request form (in the “Notes” box just mention that you are aware that the UCM library has the eBook, but you would like the printed copy) and continue until you reach a message that may stop you from completing your request. However, there’s no need to worry. Just look for the button below that message that says “Process” and click. This will allow for your request to be successfully submitted and if you would like, there is also an option to send the confirmation page to your e-mail address.

If you are interested in articles, books, or other material written in another language, you can access them through the quick search toolbar. Under the “All UC Libraries� tab, enter your topic (eg. “gun control�).

On the next page, the left sidebar will allow you to refine your search by language. Have fun!

Have you ever tried searching for scholarly information within Google and find that you are searching through a lot of results without much success? Google Scholar is a powerful search engine for your research needs. It provides the broad spectrum of information all within a single search engine. There are also other features under the Advanced Scholar Search if you happen to know the exact title of an article or if you just want to narrow the results to a more specific area. Even if you just want to narrow the results to specific dates, you can do that too.
And if you like to use Refworks for your bibliography, you can even have the results pull up sites that can be exported into Refworks by changing that within the Scholar Preferences page.

When looking for articles on our databases, an easy way to find the different forms the article comes in is through the UC-eLinks button. This will bring up a new web page. From here you can view the article online or order the article or journal through ILL.

If you’re looking for an online version of the article, and it isn’t in the UC-eLinks page, you may want to try finding it using Google Scholar. Simply copy the article’s title into the Google Scholar page, or copy it into the Google Scholar search bar on the library home page. The hyperlink on the Google page will (if it is able) take you to the full text of the article.

When searching for a book with just the author’s name, narrow your results in our UCM Catalog or Next Generation Melvyl by:

-Searching your results page using Ctrl+F to look for the books in the general subject area of interest (i.e. Psychology, Economics, Cognitive Science)

-Narrowing the type of resources on your results page using the limiting option on the side bar. You can limit by type (book, journal, or article) or even year

Still have a long list of results?

Try using Amazon to search for a list of books by that author. If you find the title of the book you want, do a search in our UCM Catalog or Next Generation Melvyl using that title.

And of course, if we don’t have what you’re looking for here, you can request the resource from another library, through Interlibrary Loan (ILL), using the UC-eLinks button.

Learn more about this process by looking at our website, coming to the Services Desk on the 2nd floor, or by looking for the students in the bright red shirts with the “i.” We’re here to help! (: