Subject Research Guides
Computer Science
Finding Technical Reports
Computing Research Repository (CoRR)
CORR is a repository of computer science reports. It aims to provide a way for researchers to quickly disseminate their finding. You can browse by subject area or search by title, author or words in the abstract.Citeseer
Citeseer is a repository for papers on the internet. It is not selective, so there is no guarantee of a paper's quality. However, Citeseer can be a good way to find papers that have not been published through traditional means. You can also link from a paper to other papers that have cited it.OAIster
OAIster allows you to search a collection of academically-oriented digital archives from many different institutions. The collections cover a wide range of disciplines, but include some computer-related collections.Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL)
NCSTRL is a collection of reports and papers from graduate computer science departments and some industrial and government labs. This repository does not appear to have many papers more recent than 2002. NCSTRL is included in CoRR and OAIster.
Finding Journal Articles
The best way to find journal articles is by searching our databases. Most of these do not have the full-text of computer science journals. You can find out if Carleton or St. Olaf subscribes to the journal in print by doing a title search for the journal name in Bridge. Current periodicals at Carleton are shelved in alphabetical order on the 4th floor by the reserves desk. Back issues are shelved in call number order on the 3rd floor of the library. If St. Olaf subscribes to the journal, you can request to have the journal sent by clicking the Request button, or you can go to the St. Olaf library and check out the journal yourself.
You may also be able to find the articles online. Authors often post the full-text of their articles on their personal web pages. One way to search for the article on the web is to search for the article title on Google Scholar.
If you cannot find the text online, and we do not have a subscription to the journal, you can order the article from InterLibrary Loan (ILL), either by requesting it directly from the InterLibrary Loan page, or by submitting a request through one of our databases. Although some InterLibrary Loan requests are filled in a few days, you should allow at least a week to get articles through ILL.
Off-Campus?
Click here to log into our proxy server to get full access to our online resources.ACM Digital Library
Full text of ACM journals and conference proceedings. You can also choose to search "The Guide" which will search the citations and abstracts of many computer science publications.Computer and Information Systems Abstracts
This database provides abstracts to articles covering most aspects of computing, from theoretical research to practical applications. Click on the "Check your library" link to see if we subscribe to the journal.INSPEC
INSPEC is mostly known as a physics database, but it has a lot of literature in computers, computing and information technology. This database also only provides abstracts, click on the "Holdings" link to see if we subscribe to the journal. Since INSPEC is hosted on ISI's Web of Knowledge, you can also find information on who has cited a particular article. Click on theScience Citation Index (through the Web of Science)
The Science Citation Index allows you to find articles that cite a specific article. This is helpful in finding newer research based on a particular article. The easiest way to search is to do a "Cited Reference Search" and search on the author's name and the publication year.
MathSciNet
MathSciNet has citations to articles published by the American Mathematical Society. To limit your search by subject, click on the "MSC" link on the left side of the page. This brings you to a search of the Mathematics Subject Classification. Computer Science is mostly classified under "68" though other classification headings might also be appropriate for your topic. Once you've found the MSC numbers, use those in the full search to help narrow your results. MathSciNet does not provide abstracts, but some records do have summaries of the articles. To find if we subscribe to a journal, you will need to manually search in Bridge for the title of the journal.Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier is a general database for finding scholarly articles in a broad range of disciplines, including Computer Science. Many articles are full-text, but most computer science articles are not. To find if we subscribe to a journal, you will need to manually search in Bridge for the title of the journal.
Finding Conference Proceedings
A lot of Computer Science research is published as conference papers. You can search for relevant conference proceedings in INSPEC and Computer and Information Systems Abstracts. Once you've found a paper, look on the website of the sponsoring organization to see if the paper is available. Be aware that the full-text is often only available to members of the organization. If you cannot access the paper through the conference page, try looking at thedepartment of the paper's author. You may find the paper posted on their website, or you may find other information related to their work.
Other Computer Science Information on the Web
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a beta service offered by Google that claims to give access to scholarly material on the web, including material that cannot be found through other search engines. Not all of the papers that you find through Google Scholar are available for free. If you come to a page asking you to pay for access, check with the library first. We may subscribe to the journal, or we can get the article for you through InterLibrary Loan. Keep in mind that while Google Scholar searches a wide range of sources, it does not come close to including all published scholarly material.Formatting References for IEEE Publications (except Transactions)
Sample formats and general style information for formatting references in the IEEE style.Formatting References for IEEE Transactions Publications
Sample formats and general style information for formatting references in the IEEE Transactions style.Formatting References for ACM Publications
Information about formatting papers in the ACM style. Click on the link for LaTeX or MS Word instructions and scroll to the bottom of either page to see sample reference formats.
Finding Books
You can search for computer science books at Carleton and St. Olaf through our shared online catalog, the Bridge. You may search Bridge by title, author, subject, or keyword.
Library of Congress Call Numbers
Computer Science books are shelved with the math books and with the technology books. Some Library of Congress call numbers to browse are:
- QA 75.5 - 76.95: Computer Science and computer software.
- TK 7885 - 7895: Computer engineering and computer hardware.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Library of Congress Subject Headings are the words and phrases that you will use to do a subject search in Bridge (as opposed to a keyword search, where you may use any words you like). Although Computer Science is a Library of Congress Subject Heading, you will probably get better results if you are more specific. Other subject headings include Computer Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Data Structures (Computer Science) and Computational Complexity.
One way to find subject headings is to do a keyword search on your topic, and, once you find an appropriate source, examine the subject headings. Click on a linked subject heading to pull up all books with that subject. If you cannot find a source using a word search, ask a librarian, or consult the print Library of Congress Subject Headings (on the Ready Reference shelves in the Reference Area) to find the proper subject heading.
This Research Guide By:
-
Ann Zawistoski
- Science Librarian
- x7671
- azawisto@carleton.edu
- Library 466








