Many students turn to Wikipedia for their initial exploration of a topic. This is fine, but be sure to augment your background research with sources you can actually include on an academic bibliography (a.k.a. your References list).
All of these resources are free for MJC students, faculty, and staff. If you're working from off campus, you'll need to sign in just like you do for Canvas or your email.
Why search here? Use this database for preliminary reading as you start your research. You'll learn about your topic by reading authoritative topic overviews on a wide variety of subjects.
What's included: Gale eBooks is comprised of subject, specialized encyclopedias with articles written by scholars and experts.
Why search here? Use this database to search our collection of thousands of eBooks the MJC Library owns through EBSCOhost. These books can be a great place to start your research.
What's included: Thousands of eBooks covering a wide variety of topics.
Why search here? Use this database when you want to explore your topic from a global perspective or to analyze and understand the most important issues of the modern world with a global awareness.
What's included: You'll find news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics, and more.
Why search here? This is a great database to use when you want to explore different viewpoints on controversial or hot-button issues.
What's included: It includes pro/con articles, court cases, primary sources, videos, media, editorials, and news on more than 800 hot topics in business, politics, government, education, and popular culture. Use the search or browse topics by subject or A to Z.
Why search here? Use this database when you want topical, in-depth coverage of world history from antiquity to the present. Read about the background, outcomes, and contemporary points of view for the major topics in history from every region of the world. This is a great database for finding primary sources.
What's included: You'll find pro/con articles, timelines, and primary sources.
Once you understand more about your topic and have a clearer idea of that aspect of your topic you want to dive into and explore, you need to create research questions that will help you focus on exactly the information you need to find to make the points you want to discuss in your paper.
Always look at your assignment for clues on the types of information and the actual content of information you’ll need to find for your research.
To help you organize your paper, you should have these types of questions:
You can see how this works in these questions below:
Guiding Research Question: IS THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM DEMOCRATIC?
Introductory Questions
Body Questions