Explore Your Topic
Use the sources below to get topic ideas or an overview of a topic.
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CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowOriginal, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues shaping our world.
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TOPICSearch This link opens in a new window
TOPICsearch contains full text for over 150,961 articles from 475 diverse sources including international and regional newspapers, EBSCO's unparalleled collection of periodicals, biographies, public opinion polls, book reviews, pamphlets, and government information.
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WestSearch This link opens in a new windowWestSearch provides simple, one-stop searching of the WCSU Libraries' resources including books and e-books, videos, articles, digital media, and more.
If your topic is related to current events, newspapers can fill in some background information to help you formulate a search.
To find newspaper article databases, filter the A-Z Databases list by Type and select News & Newspapers to see which databases to use.
Keep in mind, these sources are not scholarly. You won't be using these as paper sources, just as inspiration or background information.
Plan Your Search Strategy
Start with your topic statement and ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the keywords and related terms for your topic?
- What kind of works (news articles, journal articles, books, websites) best fit your needs?
- What are the major sections of your paper? You may have to group keywords for each section.
Resources
To find curated resources by subject, try Subject Guides.
To see a list of all databases, use our A-Z Databases list.
Books, Media, & Articles
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WestSearch This link opens in a new windowWestSearch provides simple, one-stop searching of the WCSU Libraries' resources including books and e-books, videos, articles, digital media, and more.
Interdisciplinary Databases
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Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
This multi-disciplinary database has records for nearly 18,000 periodicals - journals, magazines, and newspapers - of which nearly 16,000 are peer reviewed. It provides full text for more than 5,000 journals, and you can use Journal Finder to locate articles that do not have a PDF readily available.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new windowContains a comprehensive backfile (current issues not available) of scholarly journals, current open access articles, and select current scholarly journal subscriptions spanning more than 20 disciplines including business & economics, education, science, history, and language & literature - all in full text
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Web of Science - Social Science Index This link opens in a new windowProvides access to Social Sciences Citation Index, including current and retrospective bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references found in over 1,700 of the world's leading scholarly social sciences journals covering more than 50 disciplines
Discipline Specific Databases
Anthropology
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AnthroSource This link opens in a new windowAccess to journals published by the American Anthropological Association.
Economics
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ABI/Inform Complete This link opens in a new windowPremier world-wide business periodicals for information on advertising, marketing, economics, human resources, finance, taxation, computers, and more with nearly half full-text. Also, information on 60,000+ companies.
Geography
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CIA World Factbook
"The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. Our Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map."
Political Science
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ABI/Inform Complete This link opens in a new windowPremier world-wide business periodicals for information on advertising, marketing, economics, human resources, finance, taxation, computers, and more with nearly half full-text. Also, information on 60,000+ companies.
Sociology
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SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
(Replaces Sociological Abstracts) SocINDEX with Full Text is the world's most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database. Its extensive scope and content provide users with a wealth of extremely useful information encompassing the broad spectrum of sociological study.Indexing and abstracts for more than 1,800 core coverage journals dating back to 1895. The database features more than 1,600,000 records with subject headings from a 31,000+ term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers.
Databases in Related Disciplines
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Communication Source (formerly Communication and Mass Media Complete) This link opens in a new window
Communication Source offers abstracts and indexing as well as full-text content from publications worldwide pertaining to Communication, Linguistics, Rhetoric and Discourse, Speech-Language Pathology, Media Studies and other fields relevant to the discipline.
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Criminal Justice Database This link opens in a new windowThis comprehensive database focuses on U.S. and international criminal justice journals, providing research support for students interested in careers in criminal justice, law enforcement, corrections administration, drug enforcement, rehabilitation, family law and industrial security.
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