CCJS 105: Introduction to Criminology

The University of Maryland Libraries have many resources that will help with the research for your CCJS 105 project. The following sources are suggestions only. If you need additional information, please talk with a Reference Librarian at McKeldin Library's Information Desk or contact Barbara Lay, the subject area specialist.

Outline

If you do not find enough information in these sources and would like to find other books, start from the Libraries' Catalog. The Catalog includes 16 Maryland campuses, but will default to the College Park campus if you are physically on this campus. The 'words anywhere" search is the most general search available in the Catalog. Try the name of your offender or a criminological theory to see if we own any books on your topic. Sometimes specific offenders and theories are included in general books about criminals and criminological theory. A search for more general topics like human trafficking or crim* theory might be useful. Subject headings are also helpful when searching for books. The subject headings are listed within the book records and the search box for the Catalog offers a “subject beginning with” or “subject word/s” search.

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Research Port is the Libraries' gateway to databases and online journals. Because of licensing agreements, access to bibliographic databases and online journals is restricted to UM faculty, staff, and students. These resources may be accessed from off campus; consult the guide Off-Campus Access for further information. For a complete list of electronic resources available to University of Maryland faculty, staff, and students, as well as information about the full range of library materials and services, consult the UM Libraries home page.

The databases in Research Port are listed by subject and name. (Online journals are listed by the title of journal.) Many databases available through Research Port will help you with your research:

Biography and Geneology Master Index (BGMI)
BGMI is an index to biographical material available in other sources. Check the Catalog to find out if we own the source cited.

Other databases you may find useful include:

Academic Search Premier
Provides abstracts and indexing for over 7,000 journals. Full text of articles for over 4,000 scholarly publications, including more than 3,100 peer-reviewed publications.

Criminal Justice Abstracts
Criminal Justice Abstracts contains indexes and summaries of international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers on criminology and related disciplines. Criminal Justice Abstracts covers crime trends, crime prevention and deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police, courts, punishment and sentencing.

Criminal Justice Periodicals
Full-text coverage for 45 of the titles most frequently accessed by criminal justice researchers, and complete indexing and abstracts for another 140 relevant U.S. and international journals.

NCJRS
Summaries of more than 170,000 publications including journal articles, government reports, books, research reports, and unpublished research plus links to over 1,500 full-text publications

SocIndex
Contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

Google Scholar
Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies, pre-print archives, and university institutional repositories. The "find-it" links work in Google Scholar(aslong as the database is accessed through Research Port.) Consequently, full text articles from sources that we have subscriptions for will be accessible. For more information about searching this datatbase, consult the guide Making Google Scholar Work for You.

There are many other databases available in research that may be useful to you, depending on the type of crime and the country the crime was committed in. The subject areas of Politics and Public Policy and even Psychology might prove useful, so be flexible in you choice of subject areas.

A word about professional journals: Many databases include limiters which allow the search to return only professional journal (also called academic or scholarly journal) articles in the results list. It is important to understand what professional journals are because databases are not always accurate. This guide will help to explain: Identifying Periodical Types

One way to check what type of journal you have is to check the database Ulrichs. When a specific periodical title is checked in this database, the record will indicate if the title is trade, or scholarly under "document type."

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Citing your sources is an important part of research. For help with the APA citation format, use the Citing Sources Using the APA Style Manual

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