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Get to know your topic
First Stop: Credo Reference
Background information helps you "catch up" on your topic. You can
- Note new keywords and specialized vocabulary
- Find important dates, events, people, and publications
- Find references to other sources in the bibliography (then find them!)
- Credo Reference - All Subjects Search This link opens in a new windowContains dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, quotations and atlases, plus a wide range of subject-specific titles.
Engage with multiple perspectives
Next stop: CQ Research and/or Opposing Viewpoints
- Investigate breif overviews that showcase different viewpoints.
- Link to additional sources.
- Note! These are either reference or news sources, NOT scholarly / peer-reviewed sources.
- CQ Press Library This link opens in a new windowIncludes CQ Global Researcher, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Almanac, The Contemporary Middle East, The Encyclopedia of Political Science, Encyclopedia of Religion in America, Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History, Historic Documents Series, and Political Handbook of the World.
- Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new windowDatabase of contemporary social issues with content structured to promote critical-thinking skills. It contains reference book titles, pro and con viewpoint articles, and a variety of periodicals, podcasts, reviewed Web links, images, statistical tables, charts, and graphs.
Figure out what the experts know.
Third stop: Academic Search Complete & Exploring Subject-Specific Databases
But FIRST: What is peer-review?
- Academic Search Complete EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals - of which more than 7,300 are peer-reviewed journals.
How to choose a subject specific database
- Oakton Library DatabasesSelect a relevant subject, then read the database descriptions and try one that sounds like a good match.
- SocINDEX Full Text EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides more than 860 full-text titles including core sociology peer-reviewed journals. This is a good database for research that are about social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior.
- ERIC Education Resources EBSCO This link opens in a new windowERIC provides access to education journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides. This is a good database if your topic has to do with schools, college, or education.
- LGBTQ+ Source EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines, newspapers and videos.