Many of your assignments - in ENGL 1102 and other classes - require you to cite a variety of scholarly sources, including books, book chapters, and academic journal articles. The best place to find scholarly sources are in the Library catalog and scholarly databases. Each database has a specialist kind of information to find. You may need to use more than one database to get all the information you need.
From this page you can
To find film and media sources and newspaper articles, see the Film, media, news page in this guide.
Most databases will let you copy-paste or export a formatted citation - look for a Cite button or quotation mark icon, and choose the style that your professor requires. In ENGL 1102 this is usually MLA style.
The Library Catalog can be used to find a variety of resources, including
You can access the catalog from the Library website in multiple ways.
A scholarly database organizes the best quality, most relevant information for a field or discipline in one place so it can be searched. Because there is so much scholarly research and so many different fields, databases specialize in which kinds of information or tools they provide.
Scholarly databases take into account the important publications and research methods of a field or discipline. The database helps you make choices about which articles you want to see - by subject, dates of publication, overall topic, and more. Google and Google Scholar, while vast, do no quality control on the content they provide or give you good tools to narrow your focus.
The following databases are good starting points for finding scholarly articles. Use the Advanced Search option to combine keywords.
Many scholarly databases include a thesaurus or subject terms list that will help you find appropriate, useful vocabulary and related keywords. One exception to this is JSTOR, which is a full-text resource. Use a variety of synonyms and related terms for your concept, and be as specific as possible for best results with JSTOR.
You can find disciplinary databases on the Library's A-Z Databases list - use the Subjects drop-down menu and look for the discipline or field you are interested in (e.g. computer science, engineering, public policy).
