UNCW - Randall Library - Topic Guides

Searching Reference Resources	Searching Electronic Databases
Searching the Library Catalog	Searching the Internet

Reference Resources

A good place to get begin researching a career is in the many valuable reference books available on the first floor of Randall Library. These career encyclopedias and guides will offer job descriptions, salary surveys, and other information about careers. Some of the major resources are listed below. If you have any questions about locating or using reference resources for your research, ask a reference librarian.

American Salaries and Wages Survey
Reference HD 4973.A67 1997

The Career Guide D&B Employment Opportunities Directory
Reference HF5382.5.U5D86 2001

Career Information Center (also available online)
Reference HF5382.5.U5 C32 2007

The College Majors Handbook
Reference HF5382.5.U5 F64 1999

Encyclopedia of Career Development (available online)

Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance
Reference HF5381.E52 2000

Occupational Outlook Handbook: Employment Information on Major Occupations for use in Guidance
Reference HF5381.A1 O3 2004-2005
Also available on the web at: http://www.bls.gov/oco/

State Occupational Outlook Handbook
Reference HD 5724.S67 1998

Library Catalog

The library catalog contains information about all of the materials in the library (books, government documents, films, periodicals, etc.). The library catalog offers descriptions of each resource and tells you where in the library they can be found. The library catalog has information on the periodicals (magazines and journals) that the library owns and what subjects each periodical typically covers, but the library catalog does not contain any information about individual articles published in the periodicals (you can use databases to find articles).

To search the library catalog, go to Randall Library's homepage [http://library.uncw.edu] and click on Library Catalog

Subject Searching
Subject searches are useful for finding very specific information, but they will not be effective unless you know some of the appropriate terms used for subject headings by the Library of Congress Classification System. For materials with career information, the following subject headings are useful:

vocational guidance
occupations
professions

vocational interests

career development

vocational qualifications

Once you have done a subject search on one of the terms above, you can either scroll through the list of specific subheadings or you can limit the materials by specific careers. To limit, click on the "Limit/Sort" button at the top of the page and choose to limit by "words in subject" from the pull down menu. Add specific professions or career fields here (for example, you could add education, accounting, oceanography, etc.).

Keyword Searching
Another useful way of searching is by keyword which allows you more flexibility than a subject search. You do not need to know specific terms for keyword searching, but you can search for any words that might appear in a title or subject heading of materials that might be helpful to you. Keyword searching allows you to combine all of the concepts into one search strategy so that you can keep your results as to the point as possible.

When you are searching for career information you usually are dealing with two concepts. First, you are dealing with a specific field or career. This could be accounting, law, marine science, physicians, etc. However, you do not want all the materials in the library on accounting or law or any other field as it would take a great deal of time to weed out the career information you need. To narrow your search to specific information about that career, like salaries and necessary education and/or training, you can add another concept to your search. For example: marine science and careers. Remember that you must think of synonyms for your search terms to ensure that you are getting all the information. For example, consider also marine biology and careers as a search strategy.

It is important that you break your keyword search strategy into component parts and not search for exact phrases. If you are looking for information on the career of an oceanographer, you should break that phrase into its main concepts and combine the concepts with "and." So instead of entering "career of an oceanographer" into the search box, you would enter careers and oceanography.

A very effective way of searching is to perform a keyword search, using the subject headings listed above, combined with a career or occupation.

vocational guidance
occupations
professions
career development

} and specific career or occupation

General Sources (found in the General Collection)

America's Top Jobs for College Graduates: Detailed Information on 112 Major Jobs Requiring Four-year and Higher Degrees
General Collection HD6278.U5 F37 1999

The Authoritative Guide: Careers for the Year 2000 and Beyond: Everything You Need to Know to Find the Right Career
General Collection HF5382.5.U5 C346 1997

College Majors and Careers: A Resource Guide for Effective Life Planning
General Collection HF5382.5.U5 P445 1997

Electronic Databases

Periodicals, such as newspapers, magazines and journals, can provide very timely and in-depth articles on careers. For example, you may find articles that profile a person in a particular career, articles which rank careers or that offer very current salary surveys. You may also find interviews with people working in the career you are researching that could give you some insight into the career itself.

To search for articles, you should use an electronic database, such as EBSCOhost. This database indexes of articles in thousands of newspapers, magazines and journals. EBSCOhost is a general databases, meaning that it has some information on a variety of topics and will probably have some information on the career you are researching.

To begin, click on "Databases and Articles" from the library's homepage. When you search databases, use the same keyword strategies as suggested for the library catalog. Remember to combine your main concepts with and to get the best results.

These databases include the full-text of many articles. However, sometimes only an abstract or citation will be provided. For these articles, you will have to check the library catalog to see if the library has a paper copy of the periodical you need. To do this, click on the "Library Holdings" link.

EBSCOhost
EBSCOhost is made up of several databases. For career information, choose MasterFILE Premier and Academic Search Premier and Business Source Premeir by placing a check in the box next to each and then clicking on "continue."
At the search screen, enter "name of career" and "vocational guidance".

Sample search format: accounting and vocational guidance

You can use the same keyword search strategies as suggested for the library catalog or you can perform a subject guide search for the career of your choice. Enter the name of the career and follow the links to articles.

Vault Career Library Online
Career Library provides access to online career guides, occupational profiles, company research, diversity profiles, industry research, career surveys, and more.
(more information on Vault Career Library)

Internet

To find career information on the Internet, you may want to use a search engine that will search for keywords you enter on web pages all over the world. However, no search engine is capable of searching the entire Internet, so keep in mind the limitations of the search engine you use. It is often best practice to choose a few different search engines and become familiar with their specific search features and result displays. Some search engines you may want to use are:

Google: [http://www.google.com] Google is one of the largest search engines available. Google does not require that you combine your concepts with "and", but will search for each word you enter. If you are searching for a phrase, place it in quotation marks. For example "career development" requires that those words appear as a phrase on the web pages Google returns to you. If you entered only career development, career could be in one part of the page and development in another.

It is important to be critical of the information you gather from Internet sites. You should evaluate each site based on its authority, scope, currency, accuracy and usability. For a checklist of web site evaluation criteria see [http://library.uncw.edu/web/research/topic/evaluating.html].

Useful Websites:

NOTE: Sometimes the best place to go for career information is to the profession association or organization for that career.

DISCLAIMER: The web sites listed are provided purely as a convenience and do not in any way imply an endorsement of any of the web sites or the contents therein.

Last Update: August 17, 2007

This page maintained by:pembertona(at)uncw.edu