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Student Resources

Find research databases, school policies, reading lists, educational support, and more.

Online Databases

General Sources

Your local library allows you to use their databases for magazines and other resources online. For student research, you can find many of these databases listed here.

Black Freedom Struggle

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources (ProQuest, no password)
Find historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence, and documents on African-American efforts to secure civil and human rights, from enslavement to the present. This collection contains more than 2,000 documents focused on six crucial phases of the U.S. Black freedom struggle.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Britannica Middle School 

Britannica High School 

Britannica Academic Edition

JStor

JStor offers free access to articles from a wide range of academic journals as well as individual chapters from academic books.

Thomson Gale Online Libraries

General 

News

Academic

In Context: Middle School 

In Context: Opposing Viewpoints 

U.S. History 

World History 

Environmental Studies 

Health and Medicine 

Science

Fine Arts 

Religion and Philosophy 

Diversity Studies 

Gender Studies 

Vocations and Careers 

Green Meadow Resources

Main Lesson Support

How to Research on the Internet

Where to Begin

  1. Most important is to plan how you are going to save what you find. One good way is to open a Word document and then copy into it those articles you plan to use. Make sure that you include all the information: web address URL, date accessed, date of issue of a magazine article, etc. Another way is to copy and paste the URLs into an email to yourself. If you do this, make sure to check it to see that the address actually works for you.
  2. Remember to use the “Advanced Search” function of the popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) “Advanced Search” helps you do what you could otherwise do by using Boolean operators, which you can learn about here.
  3. An excellent guide to the use of Google’s search tools is found here.
  4. You should also consult subject directories to help you hone in on important aspects of your topic. This site from UC Berkeley can point you to some other good ones.
  5. You can get a fine tutorial on using the Internet from a site offered by UC Berkeley. They even offer handouts and Powerpoint presentations to make things clearer to you.

Quick Tips

If you are searching for a whole phrase, put it within quotation marks.

Try “Clustering.” Meta-search engines, such as Dogpile are useful not only because they draw from a variety of other search engines, but also because they give you a list of possible related topics with which to continue your search (search engine Ask also does this.) You can also try Copernic, which requires a free download, and Surfwax, both of which will give you quite a different set of results.

Citing Your Work

It is essential that you demonstrate to the best of your ability just how credible your source is. Your paper will be seriously weakened if there is not a good indication that each source comes from a reliable place. Click here for a page that can help you determine if a page is a reliable source. We will go over this in class together, using some good examples, but it will be important for you to refer to this webpage from time to time. Just using Wikipedia without corroborating the information is a sure way to bring down your paper’s evaluation.

When it comes to Wikipedia, it’s a remarkable compendium of knowledge put together by thousands of well-meaning people. And, yes, the information may change frequently and may be simply incorrect. If you use it, you must back up the information from another source. Frequently you can find it by clicking on the reference provided. If not, don’t use it or do your own search to find corroboration.

To best use Wikipedia, look at the list of references and the list of external links at the bottom, or click on the Discussion tab to see what people are saying. Often the discussion and arguments can be as illuminating as the article itself.

And, finally, if you get stuck or need any help, you can always email your teacher.


Footnoting

It is essential that you footnote often and accurately; this includes not only quotations but all other information you have found.  Each time you get to the end of the quotation you will place a number, writing it slightly above the line. You can either put the sources at the bottom of the page or at the end of the paper.

Every fact that is not “common knowledge” must be footnoted. If you use a phrase or portion of a sentence, it must stand within quotation marks. Be careful that you do not take a passage and simply change a few words. To protect yourself from inadvertent plagiarism, you should put aside your source and write it totally in your own style.

If a page goes by without a footnote, it implies either that you have discovered every idea on your own, or that you have constructed the entire page from one source. Lengthy gaps between footnotes are not acceptable.

For tenth through twelfth grades the following format is used for footnotes: give the author’s name (first, last) followed by the page number, if there is one. If there is no author, give the title of the article or the page.

Examples:
Willa Cather, pp. 2-4.
“Gun Control: The Forgotten Issue,” p. 13.
Interview with Frank Backly.

“Guatemala Culture”
David Lippman.
Mark Jackson, p. 89.


Bibliography

The bibliography follows alphabetical order, with the last name first. Pay attention to the examples, along with the formatting you must use. Use a separate page for a bibliography.


Additional Bibliography Notes