Scholarly articles are not the place to start your research. First, you need to get to know your category/topic. With general background information you can start to narrow the topic down and create the necessary focus. This will help you develop context for your topic as well as get to know the specialized terms used by experts.
Try Credo and the Oxford Bibliographies resources to obtain general knowledge. Your textbook is helpful at this stage as well.
When you go into Credo, search for simple terms and phrases, starting with your main topic idea. Credo will suggest related terms as you start to type.
Your search results from Credo are all from encyclopedias and dictionaries -- again, this is background research to give you ideas and a better understanding. In all likelihood, you should not be directly referencing these results in your final works cited!
Use the Credo mind-map function to learn alternate terms and concepts on a category.
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