LibGuides at USA: ED 500-Level Research Resources: Finding Books

About this Guide

This guide provides resources for Education graduate students; it is specifically geared toward distance education students. Some resources may be located physically in the Marx Library, while others may be available online.

Dissertations

USA students and faculty have free access to the full-text of USA dissertations. Choose "Dissertations & Theses @ University of South Alabama" from the ProQuest database list or type "south alabama" in the School name/code search box on the Dissertations Abstracts search screen. Dissertations completed at other universities will not normally be available in full-text, but are available for purchase.

Dissertations & Theses This link opens in a new window
To search only dissertations, click "Clear all databases" then check the boxes next to the dissertation database titles then choose "Continue."

Electronic Books

ProQuest Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
A collection of over 70,000 electronic books covering all academic disciplines. Pages from ebrary titles can be printed by using the InfoTools button and choosing Print. You can choose to print the current page, a range of pages (with the maximum number of pages being 60) or an entire chapter.

EBSCO eBook Collection (formerly NetLibrary)
A collection of about 11,173 current electronic books which you (student, faculty or staff) can search, browse, check-out and read on a computer anywhere in the world. The University Library has added the Teacher's Resource Collection of 46 books to our NetLibrary subscription. Do a Title search on the SOUTHcat Catalog: Teacher's resources.The checkout period for books from Netlibrary is currently 4 hours. In order to check out a book, you must create an account with NetLibrary.

SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to many journals (1997-current) and some electronic books (2005-2010) in many fields, including education.

EBSCO Academic Collection
This subscription databases provides the Library with access to over 112,000 ebook titles on a variety of topics. Although these books need to be checked out, more than one person at a time can access, view and checkout these titles.

SOUTHcat

SOUTHcat: USA Libraries' Catalog

To find books, government documents, and media items in USA Libraries' collections, use SOUTHcat: USA Libraries' Catalog. SOUTHcat does not include journal articles.

Catalog tips and tricks:
- Keyword searches – use quotation marks to hold phrases together ("higher education")
- Truncation – use ? after the root of a word to find all its variants (educat? finds educate, education, educational...)
- Browse the Subject(s) field in records to find the right words for searches. (Example: Try doing a keyword search for "higher education," then look at the subject(s) field in several records. You’ll see that the subject term is "Education, higher." Click the subject heading to find more records with this subject.)
Revise and refine your searches.
Watch for repeating call numbers and browse stacks in that area.
Pay attention to the Location and Status fields. You will need this information to locate the item in the library.