Research Guides: ENGL 110: Brister: Searching as Strategic Exploration

Places to Start

Use these resources to find reference entries and books, which can help provide an overview of your topic.

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
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A one-stop reference source featuring information from encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and more. Includes images, video, audio pronunciation of terms, maps, data tables, quotations, citation assistance. Subjects include art, biography, quotations, technology, medicine, and more.
Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Gale Virtual Reference Library is a useful collection of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference sources which cover a wide range of subject areas, including: American History, Philosophy, Religion, Technology, and more.
Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
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Ebook Central offers a large collection of authoritative ebooks covering all academic subjects. Ebook Central ebooks can be read instantly in your browser, and most can be downloaded to your computer or mobile device for offline reading. For help and more information, click the green question mark above this description.

This box will search most of the library's electronic resources, plus books and other items available in our physical collection.

Search Everything:

*Remember that a perfect source that answers all of your questions may not exist, in fact, it probably doesn't. You'll need to take bits and pieces from the sources you were able to find and combine them to get closer to an answer. One source may talk about your topic in a national context, another may talk about important people or events, or you may find some key terms that you didn't previously know. Depending on the depth of your research, you might next try taking some of these new pieces of information and using them to search for scholarly journal articles in an academic database.