Category Archives: Research Tools

Research Tools

Human Rights Research Workshop– Wed. October 10 at 4

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Join me on Wednesday, October 10 at 4 PM in the Electronic Classroom 2 of Babbidge Library for a workshop on conducting human rights research. The workshop is being sponsored by Namaste, UConn’s student human rights journal, and will last a little under an hour.

At the Human Rights Research Workshop, we’ll be covering the following:

* Overview of the Human Rights Subject Guide and library resources for human rights
* Databases for human rights research and how to find peer-reviewed journal articles
* Search tricks for HOMER to find human rights materials
* Overview of the Dodd Center and human rights archival resources on campus

I hope to see you all there!

RefWorks Bibliographic Management Tool

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We’re pleased to announce a new tool to assist students with managing journal articles and creating bibliographies and works cited pages. 

RefWorks

RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic management program which allows you to:

*  Create a personal database of citations from journal articles, books, book chapters or other sources

*  Automatically generate a bibliography (works cited page) in APA, MLA, or other bibliographic styles in MS Word after downloading the RefWorks Write-N-Cite plugin

*  Export search results from the UConn Libraries’ research databases directly to RefWorks

*  Link to the full text of online articles from your RefWorks database using the ‘UConn Links’ button

*  Share your RefWorks database with others using RefShare

This is a really great tool which can be a total lifesaver when you’ve waited to the last minute to write your paper and don’t have time left to format your bibliography before running off to class.  RefWorks does that for you! 

** Click here to Create or Log in to your RefWorks account.  ** 

(For more information about RefWorks, go to http://refworks.uconn.edu/)

Finding Articles from a Citation

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UConn Libraries are pleased to announce the new and improved Citation Linker/Full Text Article Finder.   It can aslo be found on the library website Most Used Databases page.  (Look for the UConn Links button:  UConn Links)

The Citation Linker is a great tool because it allows you to quickly determine if the library has full text access to a particular article.  All you have to do is type in the citation information, and voila!

How to Find Full Text Human Rights Articles

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Looking at the stats for this website, it looks like many people who come to this website do so after googling “full text human rights articles” or something similar. 

For those looking for full text articles on human rights, there is good news and there is bad. 

First the bad:  Using Google, Yahoo!, or any other internet search engine is going to provide very limited results.  You may come up with a random article that someone cut and pasted and added to their website.  You may come up with essays on human rights that people have written on personal blogs.   Unfortunately, neither of these results are appropriate for academic human rights research. 

Instead, you need to find articles in peer-reviewed journals.  Examples of peer reviewed journals include titles like The Journal of Human Rights and Human Rights Quarterly, While there are a few journals freely available online, such as the Harvard Human Rights Journal, the bulk of them are only available through subscription databases such as Academic Onefile (formerly InfoTrac), Proquest Research Library, J-STOR, Academic Search, etc.

But now the good news!  University students only need to go to their school’s library website to access subscription databases for their research.  UConn students have a number of tools available to them for finding journal articles.

The Human Rights Research Guide has an entire page devoted to databases and finding journal articles on a variety of human rights subjects.    For UConn students, all you have to do is click on the database links.  (If you’re off campus, login to the UConn Virtual Private Network (VPN) first.)

Once you’re inside the database, many of them have ways to search for full text articles only.  But what if the perfect article for your paper comes up and it isn’t available full text?

For example, this citation, taken from the PAIS International database.  The article does not come up as full text.

Global Challenges: Climate Chaos and the Future of Development.
Sachs, Wolfgang
IDS Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 36-39, Mar 2007
… development issues including economic growth & equity, human rights & wellbeing. He argues that the growth of the West was made possible by unsustainable exploitation of carbon resources & the colonies, & this can never again be repeated. The …
View Record | InterLibrary Loan | UConn Links

But, don’t despair! 

Click on the UConn Links button at the bottom of the citation.  When you do this, a new window opens telling you that UConn does in fact have this article available full text in another database. 

If you find an article that isn’t available full text in any of UConn’s databases, you can request the article through Document Delivery/Inter-Library Loan (DD/ILL) and a pdf copy will be emailed to you within 2-5 days.

For human rights articles in particular, here are a couple of databases that I recommend.

Academic Onefile

Includes most disciplines (multidisciplinary) with good coverage of both popular and scholarly publications.  Click on the boxes to limit to peer reviewed articles.  Can also limit search to full text only.

Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO)

Articles and reports on international affairs. Includes scholarly articles, papers from university research institutes and non-governmental organizations, foundation-funded research projects, and conference proceedings.

Human Rights Film Collection at UConn

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The Human Rights Film Collection has been updated and expanded for the new academic year to include almost 400 films.  An annotated pdf listing of films (55 pages, 429 KB) is now available on the human rights research guide’s film page.   Films are listed in alphabetical order by title and include summary information, call number, format, and location.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the films are VHS cassette tapes, but we are continually updating the collection to include more DVDs.  Most titles purchased since 2002 are in DVD format.  To browse the film collection in person, go to the media room on the 3rd floor of Babbidge Library. 

A small sampling of titles from the Human Rights Film Collection:

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia/ Millennium Film, a film by Pirjo Honkasalo.  2004.  DVD. 

Reveals the psychological devastation the Chechen conflict has inflicted on children.  DK 511 .C37 T4 2004 

All About Darfur.  written, produced and directed by Taghreed Elsanhouri.  2005.  DVD.

Includes interviews with ordinary Sudanese in outdoor tea shops, markets, refugee camps and living rooms to illuminate the deeply rooted prejudices at the heart of the current ethnic violence.  DT 154.6 .A45 2005.   

Hunger in America/ produced by Martin Carr; written by Peter Davis. DVD

A researched study of hunger and malnutrition in the United States, focusing on communities in Alabama, Arizona, Washington DC and Texas.  There is also analysis of US government food programs, including farm subsidies, food stamps, and surplus food.  HV 696 .F6 H85

The Torture Question.   Written, produced and directed by Michael Kirk; a Frontline coproduction with Kirk Documentary Group, Ltd. ; WGBH Educational Foundation.  DVD

Episode of the PBS series, Frontline, which explores decisions made in Washington, D.C. in the immediate aftermath of September 11th which led to policies which allowed for prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq.

For more films, please see the complete film listing.

New Human Rights E-Books for Undergrads

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Human rights in the United States: a dictionary and documents, by Rita Cantos Cartwright and H. Victor Condé.  (UConn access available here.)

Globalization and health, edited by Ichirō Kawachi, Sarah Wamala.  (UConn access available here.)

Human rights worldwide: a reference handbook, by Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat.  (UConn access available here.)

Which rights should be universal? by William J. Talbott. (UConn access available here.)

Human rights in the ’War on Terror’,  edited by Richard Wilson.  (UConn access available here.)

On researching NGOs…

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Instead of just looking at the websites for Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, and Oxfam, why not check out some books that have been written about these organizations?

Keepers of the Flame : Understanding Amnesty International, by Stephen Hopgood.  2006. 

Diplomacy of Conscience : Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms, by Ann Marie Clark.  2001.

Like Water on Stone : the Story of Amnesty International, by Jonathan Power. 2001.

A Cause for Our Times : Oxfam : the First 50 Years, by Maggie Black, 1992.

Bridge of People: a Personal View of Oxfam’s First Forty Years, by Ben Whitaker, 1983.

Hope in Hell : Inside the World of Doctors Without Borders, by Dan Bortolotti, 2006.

New tool for finding full text journal articles

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Our Womens Studies librarian has developed a brief video tutorial which shows how to use the UConn Links tool to locate journal articles full text.  http://www.lib.uconn.edu/using/tutorials/instruction/Viewlets/UConnLinksGen/UConnLinksGen_viewlet_swf.html

If you are using a database and find a citation for an article that you want, all you have to do is click on the UConn Links button and it will determine if we have access to the article full text in a different database, and if so, it provides the link to take you there.  If not, it directs you to a window to request the article through Document Delivery/Inter-Library Loan (ILL).