| Contact | |
|---|---|
| Stacy Anderson | |
| Phone: 231-591-3635 | |
| Office: FLITE 140C |
|
| Contact | |
|---|---|
| Kristen Motz | |
| Phone: 231-591-3625 | |
| Office: FLITE 140H | |
| Contact | |
|---|---|
| Emily Mitchell | |
| Phone: 231-591-3730 | |
| Office: FLITE 140F | |
Police and Society - CRIM 311
This class help page is designed to guide you through a variety of resources that may be helpful to you as you research ethical issues in criminal justice. Information on these topics can be found in books (electronic and print) and journals as well as in government documents. Be sure to check your assignment for the exact requirements in regards to the types of sources you can use!!
Is the article authoritative and scholary? Is it from a peer-reviewed source? For college-level research, you most often need scholarly resources. Scholarly journals, unlike magazines, usually report research undertaken by scholars and researches in a particular field of study. Articles in scholarly journals tend to be long, include a description of the research methodology, and include citations, or references and footnotes.
Sometimes you may need to find peer-reviewed, or refereed articles. These are articles that have been reviewed by a panel of experts in the particular field before the article is even accepted for publication.
Many of the article databases allow you to easily limit your search to peer-reviewed articles while others do not. To verify the status of your journal as peer-reviewed, you can use Ulrich's Periodical Directory.
For more information on this topic:
- FLITE's short video tutorial Types of Periodicals: Popular, Trade, and Scholary
- FLITE's Guide to Popular vs. Scholarly Periodicals
- UC Berkeley's guide to Critical Evaluation of Resources
Books are the best way to gather background, gain a general understanding of your topic, and then explore subjects in-depth. Reference Books, either in electronic or print, are an excellent starting point.
Credo Reference
Credo Reference includes articles and essays from nearly 450 reference books. You may wish to limit your results to "law". Additional resources are listed at the bottom of each essay.
Sage Reference Online
Sage Reference Online includes information from over 80 Sage encyclopedias. Criminal Justice is well-represented in this collection. Choose Advanced Search and limit your results to the subject "Criminology and Criminal Justice" for the most relevant results.
To see if information can be found in full-length books (print and e-books), search FLITE's online catalog. Trying Subject, Keyword, and Title searches may turn up useful results. To limit your results to e-books, from your results page, click on Availability - Online or Format - Ebooks. FLITE provides access to over 40,000 e-books, so the possiblity of finding book resources for topics in criminal justice is very high.
If the book is available as an e-book, you can click on the link that says "connect to this electronic resource." There is a lot you can do with e-books if you download them rather than just read them on the screen. See this guide to finding online books for more information.
If Ferris does not own the book but another library in Michigan does, you can request it be sent to you through MelCat.
If no library in Michigan owns the book, you can also request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Criminal Justice Periodicals Index
This database provides selective full-text coverage to journals in the fields of law enforcement, corrections administration, social work, drug rehabilitation, criminal and family law, industrial security, and other criminal justice fields. Citations come from over 250 U.S. and intertional criminal justice journals and extend back to 1981.
Criminal Justice Abstracts
With citations dating back to 1968, Criminal Justice Abstracts is prepared in cooperation with the Criminal Justice Collection of Rutgers University Library. Indexing journal articles, books, and government reports, Criminal Justice Abstracts covers such topics as crime trends, crime prevention and deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police courts, and sentencing.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) contains more than 7,000 full-text reports, most authored by the U.S. Department of Justice, on a myriad of criminal justice-related topics. See the links labeled "Library/Abstracts" and "Publications/Products" to search the two components of NCJRS.
Criminology (Sage Journals Online)
The Criminology Sage database is an all full-text database with very deep backfiles, so you research your topic over a longer time span, providing you with a broader scope.
Academic OneFile
Academic OneFile is a database with articles covering a very large range of topics, and is always a good source to look for articles in any discipline.
Getting the Article
Once you've found citations relevant to the topic you're working with and you need to get a copy of the articles, you'll need to verify whether FLITE owns the particular journal in which each article was published. Many databases now have a link called "Find It", which gives you the range of options available to find the material. If the full text of the article is available, you will be able to find the article by clicking on the link.
Sometimes the Find It button will provide a link to the Library Catalog. This indicates that the journal is found in FLITE's print collection. If you are off-campus and can't come to FLITE, simply order the article through Interlibrary Loan and mention you are an off-campus student in the Notes field.
Government Documents available at FLITE can be searched through the Online Catalog.
Other resources to locate government documents include:
- Google Uncle Sam
Google Uncle Sam searches all .gov and .mil websites; it does not include all the information the federal government puts out and it does include state and local government information - USA.gov
another centralized place to find information from U.S. local, state, and federal government agency websites - US Department of Justice - Publications
- GAO Reports
Whenever you are quoting or using information from a source, you must credit or cite that source. Failure to do so is plagiarism which can lead to expulsion from the University.
To learn more about citations, check out this FLITE Citations page.
Print out the FLITE APA Citation Guide and use it to properly format your citations.
Another good resource for APA help is The Owl at Purdue University
Don't forget! Ferris' Writing Center will critique your papers, including bibliographies and works cited pages via email. Find more information at their website.
To avoid Plagiarism:
- Take clear, accurate notes about where you found specific ideas
- Write down the complete citation information for each item you use
- Use quotation marks when directly stating another person's words
- Always credit original authors for their information and ideas
For more information about Plagiarism, please explore the Plagiarism web page provided by the Ferris State University Writing Center.
Know How to Use Your Information Tools (Work Smarter, Not Harder)
- Take five minutes as you start to come up with search terms and save hours of time later on
- Do your research early
- Begin with general searches, then become more specific
- Note which database you searched and what search terms you used in your searches; when you learn new terms, you can go back and try those terms in the databases you've already searched
- Look for a marked list function to save searches
- Save your searches either by printing material, emailing citations, saving to a flash drive, or using a bibliographic database like Refbase or Citation Machine
- Ask for help!
Plagiarism is the act of presenting another's work or ideas as your own. Plagiarism is often unintentional, but it occurs whenever you use someone else's ideas or words without giving them credit. It can be obvious - purchasing a term paper or turning in a project done by someone else. It can be putting other's ideas into your own words. It can be cutting and pasting text from a web site. A simple rule: Do not copy text from Web pages or other sources without identifying and giving credit to the original author.
Here are some ways to avoid plagiarism, taken from PILOT, the FLITE Information Literacy Online Tutorial.
FLITE Distance Education Library
Services
One of our missions at FLITE is to offer all off-campus students access to the high-quality research materials available through the library. FLITE's subscription databases are available to all current Ferris students, faculty, and staff, including off-campus students. Our Distance Education web site should help you with any questions you may have about reaching FLITE from wherever you are. Be sure to study it c arefully and return to it often. If you experience problems logging on, please call (231) 591-2669 or (800) 4-FERRIS (ext. 2669).
Contact: Stacy Anderson / Email / Phone: 231-591-3635 / Office: FLITE 140C
Contact: Kristen Motz / Email / Phone: 231-591-3625 / Office: FLITE 140H
Don't forget, you are welcome to come to the Oval Information Desk and ask for help any time. You can also call us 231-591-3602 or chat with us.
Last update: October 8, 2010