How do I use a citation to find a resource (book or article)?
Answer
The process for using a book citation and an article citation to find the resource are different. They are each laid out below.
Finding a Book using a Citation
When you locate a book citation in a reference list, you should first identify the book title.
e.g., Fowler, J. W. (2000). Becoming adult, becoming Christian: Adult development and Christian faith (Rev. ed). Jossey-Bass.
To identify if Zondervan Library has this book, you would want to open WorldCat and copy/paste or type in the title, using quotation marks around it.
e.g., "becoming adult, becoming christian"
Use the filter in the left column for Taylor University, Zondervan Library to limit to those books in our collections. If it does not appear there, you can expand to Libraries Worldwide in order to request the book through our Interlibrary Loan service.
Finding an Article using a Citation
Using an article citation from a reference list requires identifying the journal title first. In which publication does the article appear? The title of the publication is what we search for in the Journal Finder tool.
e.g., Fowler, J. W. (2001). Faith development theory and the postmodern challenges.International Journal for the
Psychology of Religion, 11(3), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327582IJPR1103_03
The results from that search indicate which databases hold the journal title and also the "Coverage" or dates of access to the complete articles. For this title, we have a few options and can choose any of them, based on the date of publication from the citation 2001.
To access the journal within any of these databases, click on the blue linked title of the journal. This opens the database to the journal entry and allows you to select the correct date of publication, along with the volume and issue numbers, which are found in the citation (e.g., volume 11, issue 3).
For this example, click on the Vol. 11 Issue 3 - 2001 link and it opens a results list of all articles from that issue which are included in this database. Identify the article you are looking for and click the Access now (PDF) button.
Note: If the publication title does not show up in Journal Finder, first double check the spelling of the title. If it still does not show up, this would be an article you should request through Interlibrary Loan. View this FAQ on how to submit Interlibrary Loan requests for more information on that process.