Supporting Your Argument - ENGL 1301 - Comp 1 - Argumentative/Persuasive Research

Resources

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Comprehensive scholarly, database, with more thousands of full-text periodicals covering a wide variety of subject areas.
Newsbank (America's Newspapers) This link opens in a new window A full text database proviing students with access to newspaper articles from around the country.
Research Library This link opens in a new window Provides access to a wide range of popular academic subjects featuring a diverse, highly-respected mix of scholarly journals.
Texas Reference Center This link opens in a new window Texas Reference Center is a Texas specific product comprised of periodicals, reference books, reports, and other content relevant to the state. Texas Reference Center contains more than 75 full text periodicals, 150 full text reference books, several Texas newspapers, and much more.
Topic Search This link opens in a new window TOPICsearch contains full text for over 150,961 articles from 475 diverse sources including international and regional newspapers, EBSCO's unparalleled collection of periodicals, biographies, public opinion polls, book reviews, pamphlets, and government information.

Search the Gray Library Catalog for Books and Videos

Search for words and phrases related to your research topic. Depending on how broad or narrow your topic is, use different searches for better results. Choose the different searches from the pull-down list beside the search box.

Subject

Use subject for broad topics such as gun control or inorganic chemistry. A subject search produces a list of subject headings and subheadings. You can use the previous and next buttons to browse up and down the list of headings.

Subject keyword

Use subject keyword to search for one or two terms—especially if one term is geographical or historical—such as gun control europe or 17th century literature. A subject keyword search matches your terms against subject headings and sub-headings.

Keyword

Use keyword to search for topics with several search terms or those that overlap subject areas.

The subject searches focus on subject headings. Keyword matches terms against titles, authors, subjects, table of contents, and other information. Keyword is looser than the subject searches but it will work for terms not found in the subject headings.

You can also use operators with the keyword search.

If a book has online in the call number and electronic resource noted in the title, it is an e-book. Each e-book has a URL link near the right side of the screen. That link will take you to the e-book.

E-books are duplications of printed books, so the content is consistent page-by-page with the print edition.

Website which contain useful factual and/or statistical information

Pew Research The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
Gallup Results on a variety of opinion polls conducted in the United States.
USA.gov
Subject-based website of Federal services and resources; keyword search covers federal and state government websites
Explore Census Data
Also known as data.census.gov; source for population, economic, housing, and geographic information and data about the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas.
UNdata The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) launched a new internet based data service for the global user community. It brings UN statistical databases within easy reach of users through a single entry point (http://data.un.org/). Users can now search and download a variety of statistical resources of the UN system.
DataBank DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them.
Zanran - Data & Statistics Search Engine Zanran helps you to find ‘semi-structured’ data on the web. This is the numerical data that people have presented as graphs and tables and charts. For example, the data could be a graph in a PDF report, or a table in an Excel spreadsheet, or a barchart shown as an image in an HTML page. This huge amount of information can be difficult to find using conventional search engines, which are focused primarily on finding text rather than graphs, tables and bar charts.

Popular vs. Scholarly Articles

Often your instructor will require "Scholarly" or "Peer-Reviewed" articles for your assignment. These are articles written for a college level audience and deal with topics in much greater detail than articles found in "Popular" magazines. The following general characteristics will help you determine whether or not an article is "Scholarly" or "Peer-Reviewed":

Popular Magazine	Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed
Written for a general audience	Written for a college level audience
Written by professional journalists who may or may not be experts on the topic written about	Written by an expert or group of experts in a particular area of study
Usually content is reviewed by a single editor who may or may not be an expert on the topic	Often reviewed by fellow experts to ensure quality of scholarship (*Peer-Reviewed*)
Author’s credentials may or may not be listed	Author’s credentials are usually clearly listed
Rarely includes footnotes or citations	Typically includes footnotes and/or cited references
Written at an 8^th grade level	Scholarly Language/Technical Jargon
Wide range of topics covered	Narrow focus
Often contains advertisements and many images	Typically no advertisements or photographs
Widely available at newsstands and bookstores	Usually only available by subscription
Examples: Time, Newsweek, People, Rolling Stone	Examples: American Journal of Political Science, Business History Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Applied Psychology

When in doubt, it is always best to check with your instructor or a librarian.

Many databases allow you to limit your search to "Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed" Journals. Often this option can be found to the side of your search results or on the advanced search screen. Be on the lookout for this option when you are searching in databases!

Here is an example of the limit option from Academic Search Complete