Contents for Languages
- Starting research: reference books
- Other electronic books
- Finding articles in journals: article databases
- Finding pictures: image databases
- Resources on the Web
- Additional resources, including print
- Help from a librarian
Good Starting Places: Reference Books
Reference books are a good place to start research. They can help you find background information, choose topics, and understand concepts and terminology. To access online resources from off campus you will need a your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password; host provider students may obtain a login from the instructor or librarian.
Encyclopedias & Handbooks
- Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
- Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education
- Handbook of Language and Social Interaction
- Handbook of Clinical Linguistics
- Handbook of Communication and Aging Research
- Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, vol. 2
- Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts
- Oxford Companion to the English Language
- The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia
- Translation, Linguistics, Culture: a French-English Handbook
Dictionaries
Finding more electronic books
To access these books from off campus you will need your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password. Type a word or phrase describing the subject in the search space below:
Finding Articles on Your Subject
All the electronic databases listed in this section may be accessed by going to the library's Database Page. If you are accessing the databases from a location other than Chemeketa Community College, remember to click the link marked, "Off-campus users."
Journal Article Databases
These tools index and/or provide full text access to articles in magazines, newspapers, and scholarly or professional journals.
You may need to combine multiple search terms to find articles on your topic. Many databases have an Advanced Search screen that has find a form for entering multiple terms.
TIP: When using keywords, try truncating: theor* finds theory, theories, theoretical, etc. (* is the truncation character for Gale).
If you find an article that meets your needs, look at its description for additional terms you can use to search.
- Academic OneFile [Gale]
- The best place to start. Has journals in all subjects.
- Education Full Text
- Education Full Text includes full text journals dealing with language and linguistics.
- JSTOR
- JSTOR is a digital archive of journal articles, including journals of music, dance, and theater.. You may find it helpful to click on Advanced Search. Check off Article under Item Type; this will eliminate book reviews from your search results.
Finding Images
You may wish to find photos or diagrams of your subject.
Britannica ImageQuest is a searchable database of more than two million images. All images are rights-cleared for non-commercial, educational use.
To access online resources from off campus you will need a your My Chemeketa user name and six-digit password; host provider students may obtain a login from the instructor or librarian.
Internet Sites
Try our customized search, or browse the list of sites below.
Customized Search
Browsing List
- American Sign Language Browser - http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/
- Video of thousands of ASL signs. Requires Quicktime browser plugin.
- CAL African American English Information Page - http://www.cal.org/topics/dialects/aae.html
- A page produced by the Center For Applied Linguistics, offering a variety of information on African American Vernacular English.
- Dave's ESL Cafe - http://eslcafe.com/
- A friendly site where students of English as a second language can find discussion with other learners, answers to questions, advice about difficult points of English and English slang, and other useful information.
- EnglishClub - http://www.englishclub.com/
- Great website for ESL learners and instructors. Provides learning aids for grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation skills.
- Ethnologue: Languages of the World - http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp
- A catalog of 6,700+ languages, with information for each language about where it is spoken, how many speakers there are, relationships to other languages, etc. Languages include creoles and sign languages. There is also a listing of the top 100 languages (by population) of the world and information on the geographic distribution of languages. Charts language families.
- Language links - http://www.langlink.net/langlink/
- Links to pages dealing with other languages and cultures; under the "Spanish" link you will find information on the history and culture of Latin America, Spain, and Hispanics in the US. La conexión "Spanish" tiene muchos sitios de cultura Latinoamericana.
- On-line Dictionaries And Translators - http://www.word2word.com/dictionary.html
- Links to multilingual, online dictionaries.
- Your Dictionary.com (Web of On-Line Dictionaries) - http://www.yourdictionary.com/
- Formerly the Web of On-Line Dictionaries and the Web of On-Line Grammars. Has links to over 400 dictionaries in 130 languages, as well as links with on-line grammars of as many languages as can be found on the Web. The site includes all types of grammars: reference grammars, learning grammars, and historical grammars. .
Finding Additional Resources
Printed reference books on Language are found in the Reference stacks in the 400s.
The library subscribes to the following current periodicals in printed form:
- Language Magazine
Finding other books and and audiovisual materials
Use the library catalog to look for additional materials
- The catalog page includes instructions on using the catalog, as well as links to other library catalogs
- You can search by key words, by authors, or by subject headings
- A suggestion on where to find subject headings to use in the catalog is given below
Fig. 1. The library catalog search
The Library of Congress has a 
Web site where you can search for subject headings.
When you put in a search term, the results will list terms in a table. Those with a red button marked, "Authorized and references" are terms that the Library of Congress uses in subject catalogs. Clicking the button may show more specific ("narrower") terms.
You may have to do several searches in the library catalog to find books that might be pertinent to your subject. Try different combinations of key words.
If you live in the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service (CCRLS) district, you may also access the catalog online at your local public library. In addition to the books in the Chemeketa College Library, the catalog also contains the collections of the 17 public libraries located in the regional library district. You can request books through the catalog, and can pass your search through to Summit (see below).
Summit
Chemeketa students registered for credit may use Summit, the Orbis Cascade Alliance catalog, to request items from 37 member libraries in Oregon and Washington. Summit uses a search called WorldCat. Authorized users have access to all of the material in the Chemeketa Community College library, plus about 28 million items in Summit. Chemeketa users may request items using the barcode number from their ID card, and have them sent to Chemeketa, or they may set up a Visiting Patron account at another Alliance library.
- Summit: http://summit.orbiscascade.org/
- How to use Summit: http://library.chemeketa.edu/information/summit.php
- More Summit Help: http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/help/default.htm
- Help with the WorldCat interface: http://www.oclc.org/support/help/navpatron/ApplicationHelp.htm
- Libraries & Map: http://orbiscascade.org/index/member-map
To comment or request help, please e-mail Reference or call 503.399.5231.
Address of this page: http://library.chemeketa.edu/information/virtual/language.php
Updated: 21 March 2013
