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Black Issues Forum 2003

The LeBron James Phenomenon and College Athletics

CSU Libraries Tools Keywords/Subject Headings Books Databases Web Sites

CSU Libraries Tools

Keywords/Subject Headings

(Subject headings can be used in SAGE for a Subject search.)

Library of Congress subject headings:

  • African American athletes.
  • College Sports -- Economic Aspects -- United States.
  • Basketball -- Social Aspects -- United States.

Keywords - can be used separately or combined using Boolean connectors (AND, OR, NOT)

Example #1: The search, colleges AND basketball, will retrieve all records with BOTH the terms colleges and basketball.

Example #2: The search colleges OR basketball will retrieve records with EITHER the terms colleges or basketball.

STEP #1: When you first start a search, identify relevant concepts to your search.

For example, identify "universities" as concept #1 and "athletics" as concept #2.

STEP #2: From these concepts, identify relevant keywords that can be used in a search.

For example, when identifying the concept of universities, try the keywords:

  • universities
  • colleges
  • higher education
  • NCAA
  • intercollegiate athletics
  • the name of a specific institution (i.e., Colorado State University)

When investigating professional and college athletics and teenagers consider these keywords:

  • graduation rates
  • commercialism
  • athletes (or student-athletes or basketball players)
  • African Americans
  • early entrants (or early entry)
  • NBA (or professional basketball)
  • draft

Identifying high school entrants into the NBA might be helpful to get personal stories.

2003 high school entrants in the NBA Draft:

LeBron James Travis Outlaw James Lang
Kendrick Perkins Ndudi Ebi Charlie Villanueva

Early entrants on an NBA roster:

Kevin Garnett Kobe Bryant Jermaine O'Neal Tracy McGrady Al Harrington
Rashard Lewis Jonathan Bender Darius Miles DeShawn Stevenson Kwame Brown
Tyson Chandler Eddy Curry DeSagana Diop Amare Stoudamire  

Early entrants who didn't make it to the NBA:

Taj McDavid Ellis Richardson Korleone Young Leon Smith Tony Key
Ousmane Cisse DeAngelo Collins Lenny Cooke    

STEP #3: Combine these terms logically in a database, catalog or search engine to retrieve relevant results.

Books

Find books using the library's catalog, SAGE.

The library staff has pulled relevant books from the Morgan Library's collection for your benefit.

Databases

  • Academic Search Premier - Contains full-text articles from scholarly journals and popular magazines.
  • Ethnic NewsWatch - Contains subjects on ethnicity, race, African and African-American studies from English and Spanish newspapers, magazines, journals of ethnic, minority and Native American Press.
  • Lexis Nexis Academic - Includes full text of today's news and past news.

Websites

Content: Dean Hendrix