Modern Languages Research Guide

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Introduction

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Research Help is still available during remote instruction!

Email or chat your subject librarian using the contact information on the right of this page. We can provide remote research assistance via Zoom (which allows for screensharing), chat, email, and phone.

Introduction Mod Lang

The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with the best resources for research on the languages offered at CSUSM (Arabic, French, German, Japanese and Spanish).

General

Beyond textbooks used in class, there are dictionaries, pronunciation guides, and reference works to help you develop skills in your new language and do research on topics of interest around the world. Here are some examples:

Dictionaries

Oxford-Hachette French dictionary : French-English, English-French
REF PC2640 .O83 1994

Collins German-English, English-German Dictionary
REF PF3640 .C68 1995

Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary
BOOK STACKS PL679 .O946 2000b

American Heritage Spanish Dictionary: Spanish/English, Inglï¿½s/Espaï¿½ol
REF PC4640 .A47 2001

Handbook of English-Arabic for Professionals
REF PJ6640 .S47 1983

Pronunciation and Usage

Using French: A Guide to Contemporary Usage
BOOK STACKS PC2460 .B37 2000

Using German Synonyms
BOOK STACKS PF3591 .D87 2000

Dictionary of Japanese Particles
BOOK STACKS PL601 .K39 1999

Writer's Reference Guide to Spanish
REF PC4410 .F68 1999

A Handbook of Pronunciation : English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto
REF P221 .C276 2005

Other Resources (just a sample)

Oxford Guide to Film Studies
BOOK STACKS PN1995.9 .O93 1998

Spanish Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Source Book
REF PQ6055 .S63 1993

Who's Who in the World
REF CT120 .W5 2004

Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925
REF PJ7521 .A73 2005

Books & Catalog

Books & Catalog Mod Lang

To develop your reading skills, practice helps! CSUSM offers general literature for reading in a variety of languages. Also, the materials held in the Language Learning Center are listed in the library catalog to show the great resources available there.

Books at Cal State San Marcos

Here are several strategies for successful searching in the Library Catalog:

Keyword search

In the simple search screen, type your topic in the KEYWORD search and use the Modify Search function to restrict the search once you have the list of results. The Modify Search button allows you to choose from the language options and brings back texts and movies in both English (translated from the language requested) and materials published in the language.

Other options to locate books and videos:

Circuit (1-3 day delivery)
Search the collections of other San Diego area libraries -- about 3,000,000 books. Find and request books directly online; pick them up at our Library in 1-3 days.

WorldCat (5-10 day delivery)
Search the collections of libraries world-wide -- about 52,000,000 books. Find a book in this database, and fill-out an Interlibrary Loan delivery request. Book will be delivered to Library for pickup.

Browse the Book Stacks
Sometimes, just looking through the shelves can turn up works you would not have considered otherwise. Using the Library of Congress subject system, languages are shelved in the P call number area. The Library of Congress provides a list of the subclasses in the P area so you can see how this is organized.

Useful Subject Terms

Library catalogs use specific subject headings to group related books together. This is different from the genre search discussed above in that genre headings address the specific format and writing style, but subject headings identify the topic of the work.

Finding a Person in the Catalog

What type of search depends on whether you are looking for works BY or works ABOUT the person.

Looking for works by a specific author? Use the AUTHOR search option and type the name in lastname, firstname order. Be sure to spell correctly! A search on Borges, Jorge Luis as author brings back 64 works that he wrote in the CSUSM collection. A similar search through CIRCUIT will return even more.

Looking for works about an author? Borges, Jorge Luis as a SUBJECT search brings back 21 different subject headings, some of which have a number of works attached (23 titles have the subject heading 'criticism and interpretation'.) Notice the lastname, firstname order!

Articles & Journals

Articles & Journals Mod Lang

Journal and most newspaper articles are found through research databases. Several databases provide material in your chosen language and others address topics you may be researching for your class. They all include some of the latest news and research in the field. To find articles, you need to select an appropriate database and if you need help, we are here!

Some databases do not offer full text of the articles. Use the button to check our other resources for full text.

This is a listing of some of the databases with languages other than English.

Useful for Research on Languages

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
Provides abstracts of articles from about 2,000 journals (published worldwide), coverage of recent books, book review citations and dissertation listings.
Coverage: 1973→current

ERIC
A national database of education literature, including reports and journal articles.
Coverage: 1966→current

MLA
Includes abstracts of articles from critical literary and language journals.
Coverage: 1963→current

JSTOR
Contains (EXCEPT for the latest five years) core scholarly journals in sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American & Asian studies, literature, humanities, music, and biological, health & general sciences.
Coverage: 1838→2005

Project Muse
Full-text coverage for hundreds of scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics
Coverage: 1993→current

Some Materials in Languages Other Than English

ClasePeriodica
Search 2,600 scholarly Latin American journals in the sciences and humanities.
Coverage: 1975→current

MAS Ultra - School Edition
Provides full-text for over 460 general interest and current events magazines.
Coverage: 1985→current

ScienceDirect
Provides full text access to over 1,000 journals covering all fields of science.
Coverage: 1995→current

Sociological Abstracts
Provides access to the latest international findings in theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and political science.
Coverage: 1963→current

Newspapers

Newspapers Mod Lang

Journal and newspaper articles are found in our research databases. Several databases provide material in your chosen language and other databases address topics you may be researching for your class. They all include some of the latest news and research in the field. To find articles, you need to select an appropriate database and if you need help, we are here! This is a listing of some of the databases with languages other than English.

Ethnic NewsWatch
Full-text ethnic newspapers, searchable in English or Spanish.

ProQuest Newspapers
Includes coverage of over 300 major U.S. and international newspapers, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune.

Online Newspapers, Magazines and News Agencies

A good means to practice your reading skills. Some are offered in English language versions as well--that can help if you want to check your understanding of what you are reading.

Arabic

Newspapers in the Middle East (listing for general and by country; via al-bab.com)

Al-Quds

Al-Shaab

French

Courrier International (political & world news)

L’Equipe (sports news)

L’Express (literary and political reviews)

Le Figaro (newspaper)

Investir (stock and business news)

Le Monde (general news)

Le Pointe

Reuters (news agency)

German

Berliner Morgenpost (daily news)

Die Zeit (weekly news)

Stern (weekly magazine)

Japanese

CNN Japan (news)

Yomiuri Shimbun (newspaper)

Spanish

El Mundo (newspaper)

El Nuevo Herald (US) (Spanish language news published in US)

Media

Media Mod Lang

Want to watch a film or listen to a CD in your language? We have materials in the library collection to meet your needs. There are different ways to find items, dependent on what you are doing--language practice or researching a specific topic.

From the library home page, type a topic or subject into the search box. When your results are lists, use the REFINE SEARCH button and choose Location=Media.

You can also use the REFINE SEARCH command to limit to a specific language from the list provided or add the name of the language desired to your orginial search terms.

Online Resources

Online Resources Mod Lang

There are a wide variety of online language resources, some are of questionable quality, but others are very good. Be careful and do further research before accepting anything posted as factual. All information is subject to an author's bias that might exclude important information.

Digital South Asia Library provides access to teaching tools as well as reference and reading texts.

Ethnologue: Languages of the World information on the 6912 known languages of the world.

Foreign Service Institute Language Courses were developed for the US Government, but not by a government agency.

Speech Accent Archive from George Mason University provides sound clips of native and non-native speakers for comparison of different speech patterns.

Worldwide Schools Language Lessons are developed by the Peace Corps as podcasts and include some sign language lessons. Also available on the main page are videos of daily life in some of the countries the Peace Corps has had a presence.

General and Government Websites

Most countries have websites, which may be the official government site with links to education, culture, research or other information to help you in your research. Some sites are aimed towards tourism or provide a very biased and restricted view of the country, so may not be useful for research, but still useful for reading practice.

How to tell if you have the country's official site? Look at the domain name. It should NOT be a .org or .com. The country code (with the exception of the United States) identifies the country's official server (examples are .fr is for France, .es is for Spain). A complete list of official national websites is at Northwestern University's Foreign Governments site. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority site provides the list of domain names for all countries of the world.

Citing Sources

MLA - APA - Chicago

As you write your paper, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found. In order to cite your resources properly, you need to follow the style guide used by for this class, the MLA Handbook.

Sites with examples of in-text citations and works cited pages (supplement the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers)

MLA Quick Citation Guide (Penn State University)
Cite Source (Trinity College)
Offers help on citations, quotations, and intellectual property
KnightCite
Citation generator--be sure you choose the MLA format!

In the library:

MLA handbook for writers of research papers.
7th ed. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2009.

APA Style
APA style guide for electronic resources

Finding the DOI

Library Copies (BF76.7 .P83 2001)

The Chicago Manual of Style is the preference for most history researchers, but always check with your professor before proceeding on both citation style and which version. The Notes-Bibliography system is generally preferred in Chicago-style citations, but there is also an Author-Date system. These systems use different formatting, so be sure which your professor prefers.

IMPORTANT! Late 2010, University of Chicago Press issued a new edition for this style guide. Check your resources to make sure you are being given the latest information based on the 16th edition as not all sites have updated yet. Notable changes are listed here.

Chicago may be referred to as Turabian, after Kate Turabian, who wrote a manual for students for research, writing and citing sources based on the Chicago citation style. The current version is titled A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers. The CSUSM library keeps a copy at the Research Help Desk at LB2369 .T8 2007 and a copy on permanent Reserves (Checkout Desk.)

Some helpful web sites:

Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide (University of Chicago, the publishers of the Manual, this is based on the 16th edition)

Citing Electronic Information in History Papers (U of Memphis, varies slightly from the guidelines of the 16th edition.)