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English 001 (Traylor): Movement Learning Community: Tips

Essay 4: Research Essay

Quick Tips

Limiters Example from Race Relations Abstracts

When reaching the results of your search in a database, you have limiters available to you on the left side of the column that include:
- Limiting to Peer-reviewed
- Limiting to Year Range
- Limiting to Subject Headings (and a separate Subheadings group)

(Note: If searching any of the Gale literary databases these options will be on the right side, including options to enter more search terms).

Read the abstracts first before reading/Emailing the article. It will be your greatest time saver.
Jot down any subject headings you come across in your searches. You may want to use these as search terms for further searching.

One good method to get cultural/historical/biographical backgrounds in the Gale Literary database is to look at articles under Biographies and Topic & Work Overviews

In addition to searching appropriate databases, be sure to take a look at and quickly browse a few titles under Key Books/Journals. Quickly look up topics in the various encyclopedias or background books on this page, search Gale Ebooks' Asian Americans, search Amerasia Journal, the Journal of Asian American Studies or cross search a multitude of Asian American Ebooks in EBSCOhost.

When searching databases, if you do not go directly to the full text of an article/Ebook and instead only go to a record and description of an article or Ebook, be sure to look at full text links that may be on the left or below your article record. If a link is not available, redo the search in Chabot Library OneSearch before concluding that full text is not present or Ask a Librarian for help.

Example Article is in JSTOR, with Link Indicated on Left Side

When citing an article from Gale Literary Sources, most often you are citing a "reprinted article." Noodle Tools will assist you with that step by step.

For automatic formatting of your annotated bibliography, consider using Noodle Tools as a place to create it.
If searching the Web use the CRAAP Test to see how well the website you are evaluating scores. Consider also downloading the Lean Library app so that when resources are available at the Library, you are alerted while searching the web.

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