Skip to Main Content
Link to Clark Family Library

Communication Arts

This guide will introduce you to resources that you can use when studying and researching in Communication Arts.

Developing Keywords

Keywords are the building blocks of research. However, finding ones that produce the kind of search results that you are looking for can be tricky. These questions can be helpful to think through these questions when developing keywords:

  1. What are the important nouns in your research question?
  2. What are synonyms for those important nouns? How might different groups refer to your topic?
  3. Who are the key figures/ what are the key events that you learned about during your research with reference sources?

Like the research process, developing keywords is an iterative process, so don't panic if your first keywords don't produce the results that you were expecting.

Below are some resources from other libraries with further tips for developing keywords

Citation Chaining/Mining

Nearly all scholarly sources, and many other reputable sources of information, will include Works Cited, Reference, or Bibliography pages (some will also include footnotes or endnotes). These are treasure troves of additional relevant resources to your topic. This method of searching, referred to as Citation Chaining or Citation Mining, can also be useful for figuring out the prominent scholars in a particular field.

When you find a citation for a potential source, you can check to see if our library has access using one of these methods.

  1. Ask a librarian for help. Bring your citation to the reference desk, open a chat, or send an email to asklib@washjeff.edu and a librarian can quickly determine if the citation you found is something we can immediately access through the library.

  2. Search the title in EDS.

  3. Look for the name of the publication the article appeared in and use the Find Periodicals search tool on the library home page to see if we have access in any of our databases. 

If our library does not have access to the source you're interested in, don't worry! You can submit an Interlibrary Loan request for it. This is a simple, free option that allows us to ask other libraries to provide you with access to an article. Learn more about ILL here: https://libguides.washjeff.edu/ill

Google and Google Scholar Search Tips