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English 101 Culminating Project: Real Horror Ethnography - Stewart - Fall 2022

CampusGuide for Professor Stewart's English 101 M/W/F Class Culminating Project, Fall 2022

Using Library Databases for Articles and Other Sources

When you do research for an assignment, you will think about the types of sources you need to support your topic. While the internet has many sources you can use, research assignments may require more academic or scholarly sources. Academic sources are written by instructors, other researchers, professors, and experts in that field. They usually have more complicated language and provide references or other sources they use to support their topic in the form of citations. Academic sources can most easily be found in library databases than on the internet.

Academic Databases To Use for Articles, Editorials, Contexulaized Documents, and Media

You can find academic databases on the GCC Library website by:

  1. Go to the GCC Library website.
  2. Under Research Help, select "Databases A-Z".
  3. Find the suggested databases for your assignment:

How To Find Academic Articles in a Database

If you have a topic you would like to explore, you will want to develop keywords to search the library databases. You can create keywords by determining the main ideas in your research question or topic.

Research Topic Example:

I want to find resources to support my argument that social media causes negative body image in women.

From my topic, I need to look at WHAT is important, WHO I'm talking about, and WHERE is it happening.

My keywords can be: WHAT: body image; WHO: women; and WHERE: social media

Note: We can put body image and social media in quotation marks to search them as phrases: "body image" AND women AND "social media"

Example Search in the ProQuest Database:

  1. From the library webpage, click on A-Z databases.Main page from GCC Library website with A-Z databases link highlighted

  2. Find the ProQuest database on the left side of the page under "Recommended Databases", or by clicking on the "P" letter.GCC Databases list with P in menu highlighted

  3. In the advanced search page of ProQuest, enter your keywords in the search box, in my example body image, women, and social media. Use AND to connect these ideas and find them together, or you can type each term in one box and add more boxes if you need. Put body image and social media in quotation marks to search them as phrases. You can also check the full-text and peer-reviewed options and modify the date to get the full-text of peer-reviewed articles from the last two years. Moreover, you can select editorials in the "Document type" menu to get editorials.ProQuest database advanced search page

  4. Below are your search results. You can limit the results by other available options. Click here to go directly to the page below.ProQuest results list

  5. Click on any of the titles to access the full text. Remember to use the cite, email, print, and save options for easier access at a later time. Click here to go directly to the page below.ProQuest database article record page

 

How to Find Editorials in Databases

To find editorials as your document types, simply select "editorials" in the "Document type" menu at the bottom of the Advanced Search page of the databases like ProQuest or US Newsstream.

These videos from ProQuest Research Companion provide guidance on how to find information for any research project.

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