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CA 110: Public Speaking: Books

Library resources for Public Speaking at the University of South Alabama

Where can I get books?

USA Libraries has both physical books and e-books. Through our online catalog, you can find accessible e-books, and you can find directions for where to get a physical book.

How to Find Books through the Library

Physical and Electronic Books

You can search the entire library catalog for physical and electronic books all at once through OneSearch.

OneSearch can be accessed at the Marx Library homepage.

Before you submit your search, please look at the checkboxes below the search bar.

Screenshot of OneSearch search menu. The "Peer Reviewed" and "In Library Collection" boxes are checked.

  • Full Text means that every search return will have the full item available to access.
  • Peer Reviewed means that every search return item will have gone through the peer review process. This sometimes happens for books/monographs, but it is uncommon. A monograph can be high quality without being peer-reviewed before publication.

Once you submit a search, you can see the search results page.

Screenshot of a search bar with Latin America as the search term.

I have not told the search engine to limit my results to only show books yet. (Monographs would count as books.) I can limit my source type by selecting Books and/or eBooks.

Screenshot of search results. Under the "Source type" drop-down menu, "eBooks" and "Books" are selected.

 

How to Find Physical Books

To find a physical book, you will need the book's Library of Congress call number. The call number tells you where the book is positioned in the library.

When you search OneSearch, and find an interesting book, you can look at the attached record to see if the book is available and what the Call number is.

Screenshot of a search return for a book. The status, location, and call number information are included.

The call number starts with F. Our bookshelves are labeled with what letter and range of numbers are contained on that row of shelves.

When you find one book that fits your research interests, you can also browse for other physical books in that same area. They will have the same or similar topics!

 

Evaluating Book Quality

Monographs are scholarly works. You can evaluate the quality of a scholarly work to check that is appropriate for your research. Every monograph should have: an expert author, a scholarly publisher, and proof that the book is built on research. Monographs may or may not have book reviews, but they can be helpful to understand a monograph's contents and quality.

  • Authorship - Monograph authors should have expertise and authority in the subject. This can be shown by:
    • A doctoral degree in the discipline. Most authors you can search online to see their educational background.
    • An association with an educational institution like a University or a research organization.
  • Publisher - The publisher should be academic. This can be an academic press or society.
  • Proof of research - Monographs are scholarly works. They should always have a list of resources the author consulted in writing their monograph. These can we called "works cited" or "bibliography". These works might be listed at the end of each chapter or at the end of the entire book.
  • Reviews - A scholarly book will likely have book reviews. These book reviews would be written by other scholars and published in academic journals. You can find book reviews by searching databases like Academic Search Complete with the book's title.