English 120 Communication Skills: Writing
- Home
- Choosing a Topic & Narrowing / Broadening Topic
- Database Searching Tips
- Evaluating Sources
- Researching Current Events & Controversial Issues
- Scholarly vs. Popular Articles
- Citing Sources in MLA This link opens in a new window
- Research Essentials Guide This link opens in a new window
- Help with Writing
- Getting More Help
Welcome
This Research Guide is designed to help first year students use Iona University Libraries' resources to successfully complete projects and assignments for the English Communication Skills: Writing required course and includes important reference works, articles in databases, and journals.
For information about course offerings, program faculty, and curriculum requirements, see the department's website.
Search the Library Catalog
Choosing Research Materials
Searching for relevant articles and books for your research can feel quite challenging, particularly when you are working against a deadline. Searching is a process of trial and error, but a few research tricks will ease the searching process.
- Use the filters on the left side of the library catalog. A few useful examples:
- If you need a specific kind of material - like a book, article, or streaming movie - use the limiters in the "Looking for A" drop-down menu to limit results by kind of material
- If you need scholarly articles, check the "Peer Reviewed" box under the "Limit To" drop-down menu
- If you want to find the most up-to-date information, use the filters under the "Publication Year" drop-down menu. You can limit materials to the last 5, 10, and 25 years, or set up a custom year range.
- Use all available clues to understand if a resource is useful for your research, including citation information. If you are only planning to generally discuss a subtopic in your paper, it's important to develop an academic understanding of your topic, but you don't need to find the most academic-sounding paper on that subtopic. Instead, combine scholarly sources about the main focus of your paper with more general reference material about a subtopic.
- When you find an article that looks relevant to your research, read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion of the article. Do you understand what is being said? Can you reasonably work to understand the article with the time you have? If not, don't fret! When you write and do research in college, you are entering scholarly conversations with people who have incredibly specialized academic expertise - so learn from them, leverage their expertise, but don't let that potentially intimidating expertise stop you from developing your understanding of a topic. Use reference materials to bridge the gap between your informal understanding of a topic and sources that can help you develop a scholarly understanding of your topic.
- Using the same keywords and still not finding useful resources? See the Database Searching Tips section of this guide to broaden, narrow, or join your keywords using Boolean operators.
- Contact a Librarian for research assistance. We are happy to help you develop effective keywords and find relevant sources for your research.
For more information on the research process and developing effective keywords, see the Research Essentials research guide.
Start Your Research
Reference resources like encyclopedias or dictionaries provide a useful bridge from how you would describe a research interest in conversation with a friend to scholarly language. Though reference materials can feel too simplistic at times, they do help you develop your own scholarly vocabulary around a topic, allowing you to develop keywords for searching WorldCat and understand how some topics might overlap with other topics.
Some reference databases are listed below. For a full list, see the Reference Databases on the A-Z Databases page.
- Britannica Academic Edition This link opens in a new windowArticles from Encyclopædia Britannica; headlines from the NYT and BBC, articles from 700+ magazines and periodicals, World data; maps, plus animations, videos, and audio files; and world atlas.
- Gale eBooks This link opens in a new windowEbook versions of encyclopedias and reference works covering most subjects, as well as a collection of classic literature and criticisms.
Databases for Articles
- Academic Search Elite This link opens in a new windowArticles from journals, magazines and other resources covering multidisciplinary topics.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowCongressional Quarterly reports addressing controversial current issues. Includes historical perspective, recent developments, statistics, opposing viewpoints, and sources for additional research.
- EBSCO (all collections) This link opens in a new windowArticles and ebooks covering multidisciplinary subjects from all Ebsco databases.
- Gale eBooks This link opens in a new windowEbook versions of encyclopedias and reference works covering most subjects, as well as a collection of classic literature and criticisms.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowScholarly journals and ebooks in the humanities, social sciences, and business. Journal coverage generally ends 3-5 years before the current year.
- MLA International Bibliography via EBSCO This link opens in a new windowA subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literature, folklore, and linguistics dating back to 1925 and containing 2.2 million+ citations from 4,400+ periodicals and 1,000+ book publishers.
- Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new windowCovering many current social issues, features updated viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, images and other resources.
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new windowArticles from journals and newspapers covering all subject areas. Includes dissertations, working papers from OECD, company reports, and country profiles.
- SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new windowSAGE Journals Online contains 600+ journals covering business, humanities, social sciences, science, technology and medicine. The full text of every issue is available from Volume 1, Issue 1 to the present.
- Congressional Research Service This link opens in a new windowReports are prepared for members of Congress by the Library of Congress to provide background information on major policy issues. Many reports are updated on a regular basis, this site includes most versions of the reports.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowCongressional Quarterly reports addressing controversial current issues. Includes historical perspective, recent developments, statistics, opposing viewpoints, and sources for additional research.
- Flipster Digital Magazines This link opens in a new windowDigital newsstand that offers a browse-able access to popular magazines such as Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, and The New Yorker.
Magazines can be downloaded to Android™ phones and tablets, Apple® phones and tables, and Kindle Fire tablets for offline reading. - General OneFile (Gale) This link opens in a new windowArticles, reports and daily updates on a variety of topics: business, technology, current events, environmental issues, health care, humanities, politics, and many more.
- Gun Regulation and Legislation In America This link opens in a new windowArticles, legislative histories, CRS reports, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court briefs, monographs, and other materials on the topic of regulating firearms.
- International Newsstream This link opens in a new windowProvides the most recent news content outside of the US and Canada, with archives which stretch back decades featuring newspapers, newswires, and news sites.
- Newspaper Source This link opens in a new windowProvides full-text of 200+ regional, national, and international newspapers. The database also includes transcripts from major television and radio broadcasts.
- New York State Historic Newspapers This link opens in a new windowThe NYS Historic Newspapers project provides free online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York's history.
- The New York Times (1980 - Current) This link opens in a new windowOften considered the official U.S. newspaper, the NYTimes publishes the complete text of important documents, speeches and presidential press conferences.Also available in full-text:
from 01/01/1939 to Present in Iona University Libraries Print/Microform
from 06/01/1980 to present in LexisNexis Academic
from 06/01/1980 to present in National Newspapers Premier
from 01/01/1985 to present in Academic OneFile
from 01/01/1985 to present in InfoTrac Newsstand
from 01/01/1985 to present in New York State Newspapers - The New York Times Academic Pass This link opens in a new windowThe Academic Pass provides access to NYTimes.com, NYTimes.com smartphone and tablet apps, and NYTimes In Education.
- Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new windowCovering many current social issues, features updated viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, images and other resources.
- US Newsstream This link opens in a new windowUS Newsstream enables users to search the most recent premium U.S. news content, as well as archives which stretch back into the 1980s featuring newspapers, newswires, blogs, and news sites in active full-text format.
- Wall Street Journal This link opens in a new windowThe WSJ is considered the US's preeminent publication for business news and information on financial markets worldwide. Content available from 1984 - Current.
- America's Historical Imprints This link opens in a new windowSearchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents and ephemera. Collections: Early American Imprints (EAI), Series I: Evans, 1639-1800; EAI, Series II: Supplement from the Library Comp. of Phil., 1801-1819; EAI, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819; American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I; EAI, Series I: Suppl. from the Library Company of Phil., 1670-1800.
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new windowJournals and magazine published from 1691 through 1820 representing print culture from early colonial imports to titles published on American soil during the Revolution and early republic
- Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowThis tool creates a federated (shared) search across all primary resources from one vendor to include: 18th Century Collections Online, 19th Century UK Periodicals, The Making of the Modern World, and Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive.
- Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new windowDigitized and searchable primary source collection of newspapers published in Britain between 1800 and 1900.
Interlibrary Loan
As a student at Iona University, you are often able to access materials from other libraries that we have lending agreements with using Interlibrary Loan.
If you are searching for a book and find the following box under Access Options:
This means that the Iona University Libraries does not own the book, but you can request the book through Interlibrary Loan.
Click the "Request Item through Interlibrary Loan" button, and fill out all information with an asterisk next to the field.
Articles can take up to 5 business days to arrive in your email.
Books can take up to 10 business days to arrive at Ryan Library. When your book is available, you will receive an email from the Iona University Libraries' stating that your book is ready for pick-up behind the Research Desk at Ryan Library. The books will be in a bag with your name on it; feel free to ask a librarian to hand you the bag or pick up the bag yourself.
For more information about Interlibrary Loan - including information about due dates for Interlibrary Loan items - see the Interlibrary Loans page.
Accessing Public Library Collections in NY, NJ, and CT
Found a useful eBook not owned by the Iona University Libraries? For complicated copyright reasons, other libraries are unable to lend eBooks to outside researchers. Instead, use the public library resources available to you as a student in New York state or resident of your respective state.
See the Find eBooks page of the Research Essentials research guide for information about accessing public library collections.
- Last Updated: Aug 16, 2024 4:42 PM
- URL: https://guides.iona.edu/eng110-120-122
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