Books
On this page:
FINDING & USING SCHOLARLY BOOKS:
Why bother with books?
While it's easy to shy away from them, scholarly books can actually be incredibly fruitful resources to consult as you do your research. Just like scholarly articles, books undergo a rigorous peer-review process, are written by experts, and are published by reputable publishers. Books can be written by a single author (monography) or multiple authors (edited volumes or anthologies). When compiled by an editor, they often help to represent different viewpoints or writings from various authors all exploring the same topic.
Feeling overwhelmed with tight deadlines?
Don't be intimidated: you do not have to read these kinds of books from cover-to-cover! Instead, identify the most interesting & relevant chapters, read closely, and highlight other sources that are cited throughout that chapter to dig a little deeper. This strategy of "tracing footnotes" is an excellent way to follow the scholarly dialogue taking place in the area you are exploring.
Examples of Border Theory Scholars:
Examples of Latinx Media Scholars:
Monograph
A detailed text on a single subject
Usually a single author
Language/writing style: academic/scholarly
Substantial bibliography/works cited
Edited Volume:
A collections of essays dedicated to a particular theme
Multiple contributors/authors
Language/writing: specialized/scholarly
Substantial bibliography/works cited
Fojas, Camilla. Border Bandits : Hollywood on the Southern Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
Brégent-Heald, Dominique. Borderland Films : American Cinema, Mexico, and Canada During the Progressive Era. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.
Fuller, Stephanie. The US-Mexico Border in American Cold War Film : Romance, Revolution, and Regulation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Home, Exile, Homeland : Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. Edited by Hamid Naficy. New York: Routledge, 1999.
BROWSING THE SHELVES:
Understanding Call Numbers
Most North American academic libraries use the Library of Congress Classification system, which was initially created meet the needs of the U.S. Library of Congress collection needs in 1904. This system aims to divide all the world’s knowledge into 21 topical areas, and groups them alphanumerically. They first assign a topic area to a letter, and then divide that topic up by numbers. Example:
P = Languages and Literature
PN =Literature (General)
PN 1993-1999 = Motion Pictures
Sometimes, it is nice to browse the print collection available locally on campus. Because this course can be interdisciplinary in nature, you may be looking at multiple sections in the library (latino studies, gender studies, film studies, and more).
SEARCH TOOLS TO DISCOVER BOOKS:
While Library Search will be the main tool you use to discover books that UCI Libraries owns physically or digitally. You can also easily borrow books owned by other UC campuses now by signing into your library account and requesting them! Search tip: use the filtering options on the left-hand side of your search results to narrow to resource type: books, book chapters.
As a complimentary search tool, you can also try searching Google Books! This is a service that searches the full-text (every word on every page of the book) of books that Google has scanned and stored in its digital database. Just remember that the full-text is rarely available because of copyright limitations, so check back with the library to obtain a copy.
Did you know you can request book chapter scans from the library, and also place books on hold? Click here to learn more!
UCI Libraries is providing free scans of book chapters and articles, and you can also place a hold for books at the library and pick them up at Langson Library circulation when they are ready. You must be signed into your account in Library Search to see this option. Click here for more info.
KEYWORDS vs SUBJECT HEADINGS:
A keyword (our 'natural language') search will searches for the: author, title, subject, and other descriptors of the book or article you are searching for. Sometimes (not always) keyword searches for words within the article. You perform a keyword search every time you search in Google. The upside to a keyword search is that it is easy, and you usually get plenty of results. The downside is that often too many results appear, and the results aren't always relevant to your search.
A Subject Heading search is a specific term used to describe the main concept of a book, article, or other resource. Once you find out what the assigned subject terms are for your topic, you can better locate relevant resources by doing a "subject" search. (These are trickier than keyword searches because they are "controlled vocabulary" in that they are predetermined when a book or article is catalogued).
SOME EXAMPLES OF POSSIBLE SUBJECT HEADINGS TO BROWSE:
TIPS to research on your topic using Subject Headings:
Keyword search
The keywords border motion pictures were used but too many results to browse (250,925). Click on the first interesting result (example, #2: Border Bandits: Hollywood on the Southern Frontier) and take a closer look at the record/details of that resource.
Subject Heading
You'll see if you select a detailed record of any result the "Subject" headings in the details. In this case, you could try clicking "Mexican-American Border Region -- in motion pictures" which would narrow your search by quite a few results - down to just 29!
The screenshots on the right are also available to view in larger format where you can zoom in/out to see the images better at this link: tinyurl.com/keywordsubject.
