For additional information on OneSearch and how to use it, please view our webpage with How-To Videos.
Typing your search in Library OneSearch is as easy to use as 1-2-3: Search, Sort and See.
Search: Enter search terms into a single search box, or select an Advanced Search option.
Sort: Arrange results by criteria such as date, subject, academic journals and other options.
See: View results, and link directly to full text for more details.
To jumpstart your research, try searching for your topic in Credo Reference or Gale Opposing Viewpoints.
These reference databases are designed to give you concise, credible background information. They're excellent resources for getting a quick overview, understanding key terms, and identifying important aspects of your topic.
Read more About Credo and About Gale in the boxes below.
Credo Reference is a library subscription database that provides access to thousands of articles from reference sources such as encyclopedias and dictionaries. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology. You can use these types of sources to gain knowledge on a subject and to help you focus or narrow your topic.
Discover pro/con perspectives from authoritative voices. Opposing Viewpoints in Context is the premier online resource covering today’s hottest social issues, from capital punishment to immigration, to violent video games. Opposing Viewpoints in Context is cross-curricular and supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes.
For a list of additional suggested reference databases, please see the Reference Databases box below.
Credo Reference is a library database that allows you to search full-text, credible reference sources - like dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks.
Think of Credo as the library's version of Wikipedia.
While you should never cite from Credo directly, you can use Credo to:
After searching for your topic in Credo, use the Mind Map feature in the search results (pictured below) to see additional keywords and related concepts that you could use in your searching for sources.
Most Credo entries will have a Bibliography or Further Reading section that will provide a list of sources at the end of an entry.
If you see a source in the Bibliography that interests you, try searching for the full-text of that source using library tools. You could potentially read and cite one of these secondary sources (i.e. books, articles) in your college work!
Gale Opposing Viewpoints is a library database that provides access to a wide range of articles and perspectives on current social and political issues, presenting both "pro" and "con" viewpoints on popular topics.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints searches a variety of sources, including:
You can also use this database for research topic development.
When reading viewpoint essays in Gale Opposing Viewpoints, recognize that the authors are trying to persuade the reader to agree with their views.
Keep in mind that these essays are opinion pieces. They are not peer-reviewed journal articles.
It's up to you to analyze the author's credentials to determine if it's a source worthy of citing in your own work.
EXAMPLE:
Take for example the following viewpoint essay - "Global Warming Will Not Increase Food Insecurity," by Patrick J. Michaels. We see in the article commentary that Michaels is a "global warming skeptic," which informs the reader that this essay will be heavily biased.
We also see that Michaels worked for the Cato Institute. A quick Google Search of the Cato Institute shows that this institution is affiliated with right-libertarianism values, which demonstrates political bias. The Cato Institute was also founded by Charles Koch, a billionaire aligned with conservative politics whose businesses have proven to violate environmental protections. The institutional affiliations of Michaels further prove why his viewpoint is biased.
Reference databases provide you with reliable background information like definitions, historical context, key theories, and important figures. This background information helps you grasp the basics of your topic before you move on to more in-depth research.
Here are some suggested reference databases:
A wide-ranging research tool for African American history and culture. Includes more than 300 titles including reference books, primary source materials, WPA slave narratives, and thousands of photographs, maps and other images.
Offering the original profiles of Current Biography and World Authors series, and the periodical coverage of Biography Index. Search result limiters include occupation/activity, gender, place of origin, birth day or month, and lifespan. Includes a searchable image collection.
Contains many of the top-ranked biographical reference collections and magazines. Offers a comprehensive collection of full-text biographies, as well as thousands of unique narrative biographies.
Credo Reference is a library subscription database that provides access to thousands of articles from reference sources such as encyclopedias and dictionaries. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology. You can use these types of sources to gain knowledge on a subject and to help you focus or narrow your topic.
Discover pro/con perspectives from authoritative voices. Opposing Viewpoints in Context is the premier online resource covering today’s hottest social issues, from capital punishment to immigration, to violent video games. Opposing Viewpoints in Context is cross-curricular and supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes.
Offers students, researchers, and professionals a wide variety of full-text interdisciplinary electronic reference sources on virtually any subject area to tackle their assignments, papers, projects, and presentations.
Empower students to understand topics from a non-U.S. perspective. Designed to support global awareness, Global Issues in Context ties together news, perspectives, reference materials, primary source documents, audio, video, statistics, and more. Through these tools, students are empowered to critically analyze and understand the most important issues of the modern world.
Provides full text of magazines, reference books, and primary source documents and an Image Collection with photos, maps & flags.
Find statistics, consumer survey results and industry studies from over 22500 sources on over 80000 topics on the internet's leading statistics database.
While newspapers ARE NOT SCHOLARLY or peer-reviewed, they can be useful for reading about current events:
Requires registration. Access to current NYTimes (excluding Cooking, The Athletic, and Crosswords) and the archive back to 1851.
Each issue of the NYT is indexed thoroughly, to provide access to not only top news stories but also detailed information on the arts, sports, business, and popular culture. Even such items as editorials, editorial cartoons, obituaries, and letters to the editor from well-known people are indexed.
Collection of national newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
This publication's detailed indexing helps users quickly find the news information they need. Each issue is indexed thoroughly, so they have access to not only top news stories but also the information contained on the various sections of the paper. The indexing covers not only complete bibliographic information but also companies, people, products, etc.
