Library Research (ENG 102 - Mauseth) Basic HS

1. Establish an issue that your essay will address, or a question it will answer.

2. Take a position on the issue.

3. Introduce at least 3 supporting points to back up your thesis with evidence.

Examples:

"Vegetarian diets improve health, help local farmers, and reduce carbon footprints."

"Light pollution is a serious problem that negatively affects animals, humans, and plants."

Email Gracie.McDonough@csn.edu for questions about research!

And you can reach any librarian at library@csn.libanswers.com.

Your opening research activity is to find a piece of music, song, a TV show, a book, or a movie related to your general topic. You don't have to use CSN Libraries to find this, but you can. If you are familiar with YouTube or Spotify, you can use these types of sources. However, if you want to try the library, check out:

Visual media can be anything from artwork to data that's visual such as a chart or graph. Check out:

Reference sources are encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, and similar sources where you go to find basic background information. CSN Libraries has collections for dictionary definitions as well as encyclopedia articles. Check out:

Magazine and newspaper articles are usually written at a level where most readers can understand them. They are popular articles rather than scholarly articles, which doesn't mean they can't be credible, it just means they were not written by experts on the subject. They are usually written by journalists rather than scholars. These articles are great for local events, pop culture, reviews, and editorials. Check out:

Of course CSN Libraries has books! You can find physical books at each campus library, or ebooks in our databases to find a chapter. Check out:

Journal articles are written by experts in the field for other experts in the field and should be research based. These are called scholarly articles, and often they are peer-reviewed, which means the articles are also reviewed by other scholars in the field. CSN Libraries has many different databases where you can find journal articles but we've selected a few to start with. Check out:

CSN Libraries has several online streaming film collections with academic videos, documentaries, foreign films, and more! Check out:

Government reports are usually found on government websites, such as those that end in .gov. While CSN Libraries does not have a government report collection, you might run into a government report when you're searching a general database collection or searching the web for statistics. If you know the specific government agency you want to search in, check out: