Best Resources for this Course
Finding Background Information
Use these databases instead of Wikipedia when you need to find background information for an assignment.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Provides original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on current events, including summaries and bibliographies. Controversial topics are addressed in a balanced, unbiased manner in the Congressional Quarterly tradition.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Discover more about your topic by viewing "mind maps" and general reference articles that cover a wide variety of topics from economics to medicine to psychology and sports. - Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new windowAllows you to search a single eBook or multiple sources at once. Include multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, and subject specific resources.
- Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive dictionary that also traces the development of English words from approximately 1150 AD up to the present day. Click on "Simple search" in the lower left corner of the database page to be able to search for words in the definitions, quotations, and more.
Finding Books & eBooks
Finding Books & eBooksBowman Library has a large variety of books and eBooks that are chosen for their relevance to the courses offered. You can access eBooks directly from the library website whether your off or on campus. Books and eBooks are good for finding overviews and history of your topic. You don't need to read the whole book to get the information you need for your project; often one chapter of a scholarly book will cover the information you need.
Finding Journal Articles
Finding Journal ArticlesOften you need to use scholarly articles, academic articles, or peer-reviewed articles. These are generally all the same thing. They are written by scholars who are experts in their fields and are usually tied to a college or university. They are great for:
- Credible and trustworthy information
- Recent findings and research topics in the field
- Research studies, tables, and data
- Bibliographies and reference lists.
Find Journal Articles about your topic:
- Academic Search Premier (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Provides searching of over 8,500 journals, including peer-reviewed, across a wide range of topics. coverage: 1975 to present - Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
The world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses. PQDT Global consists of PhD and Masters dissertations and theses - over 3 million theses abstracts, with approximately half in full text. Subject coverage includes business and economics, social sciences, technology, arts, and humanities.
- EBSCOhost (includes several component databases) This link opens in a new windowProvides access to a collection of databases, including Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, PsycInfo & Articles, among others. Able to search one or all of them at the same time. Sources include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, reports, etc.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowProvides access to scholarly articles & books across many disciplines. Full text is available for some content; whatever is available may be requested through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A full-text collection of more than 400 journals in business and the liberal arts, with especially strong coverage of business, finance, economics, history, regional studies, education, and sociology. (Our subscription includes the Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences IV, Business I, and Business II collections.) JSTOR is notable for the high quality of the journals it includes. The most recent three to five years of each journal are usually excluded from JSTOR, however.
- Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Provides full text criticisms, biographies, bibliographies, and work overviews. "Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on nearly 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world, supplemented by the scholarly materials of the Scribner Writers Series and Twayne's World, U.S., and English Authors Series." - PsycARTICLES and PsycINFO (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
PsycArticles provides full text access to over 50 top psychology journals. PsycInfo provides abstracts to a wide array of journals in the field across all subject areas. - Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities Library This link opens in a new windowOver 1400 journals featuring key research across 14 Social Sciences & Humanities subject areas, including education, business, mental health, psychology, cultural studies, and more.
Find News Articles
- New York Times (NYTimes.com) This link opens in a new windowA great resource for tracking events & developments across the country. After activating your subscription from one of the links below, log on to the New York Times site directly using your Menlo e-mail & password to access content.
- New York Times One-Time Activation from Off Campus This link opens in a new windowUse this link to set up your account from an off campus location.
- New York Times One-Time Activation from On Campus This link opens in a new windowUse this link to set up your account from an on campus location.
- Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition) This link opens in a new windowAccess the Eastern Edition of the Wall Street Journal through ABI/Inform. Use the search option to search for articles or browse by issue. Coverage from 1984-present.
Statistics & Online Resources
- Pew Research CenterAn important independent organization that "provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world," through opinion polling and social science research.
- ProCon.orgContains information on both sides of popular debate topics.
- TED TalksA great spot to find a wide range of talks. Use the filters, to narrow by topic, duration, speaker, or subject. The "sort by" dropdown allows you to narrow by type of talk. Take a listen!
- Statista This link opens in a new window
One of the world's largest statistics portals with data from over 18,000 sources. Provides access to 1 million statistics. Also contains information on industries, countries, digital markets, and other topics, as well as infographics.
- UNHCRUNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.
- World Travel & Tourism CouncilFor over 30 years, WTTC has conducted research on the economic impact of Travel & Tourism in 185 countries and issues such as overcrowding, taxation, policy-making, and many others to raise awareness of the importance of the Travel & Tourism sector as one of the world’s largest economic sectors.
Another place to search for needed information is simply to 'Google it.' Again, it is important to think about what results you are finding: Who is the author or sponsor, why is the information being published? Is there obvious bias? How authoritative is the source you find?
Google gives you so many results it is difficult to know which ones are useful or reliable. Articles rise to the top of a search based on the number of times they are clicked on; this might not be the best way to choose what will be most important for your search.
However, Google does allow several ways for you to target your results. If you implement some of the following techniques, you will find that you can leverage the power of Google to help you find important results for your paper. Try out some of the tips below.
Get the most out of your Google search
Searching in Google can also help you uncover relevant articles for your research. The problem is, how to find results that will be helpful?
SITE Searching
One way to target results in Google is to employ the site search. This requires you use a specific phrase before adding search terms to tell Google you only want results from a specific website or domain. The search always begins with site + colon + URL or Domain all without any spaces; next, add a space and insert your search terms. See the examples below -
- site:nytimes.com refugee travel pandemic This search phrase tells Google that you'd like results from the New York Times website that mentions refugee travel during the pandemic . **Using a site search is one of the best ways to search for articles on a given topic in the New York Times** You can use the Tools link to limit the date range. Here the search has been limited to 2019-2022.
- site:gov travel AND 'climate change' This search phrase tells Google you'd like to see articles, reports, etc., from government websites concerned with travel and climate change. Because we want Google to search climate change as a phrase, it's important to put the two words in quotes. [This search is limited to the period 2017-2022]
- site:edu tourism AND environment This search phrase tells Google to retrieve articles published by or in educational institutions having to do with parenting style as a concept and how it affects or connects to identity formation.
Other search tips in Google
- Limit the date of your results by inserting the phrase after + colon + year or date without any spaces
- after:2019 travel restrictions COVID-19 This phrase tells Google that you'd like all your results to have been published after 2019 (note: the after + colon + date phrase can come before or after your search terms)
- You can also limit your results to a given date range by clicking on Tools under the search bar, and then Any Time under that.
- Search for an exact phrase by putting a phrase in quotes when entering it in the search bar, e.g., "climate change" or "carbon footprint" -- using the quotes will ensure you retrieve results with that exact phrase.
