Research - Assignment | The American Dream & Great Gatsby Character Analysis (Black, Trainer) - Research Guides at Lone Star College

Literature Databases

To assist you in understanding and interpreting Gatsby and its lead characters:

Bloom's Literature (Infobase) This link opens in a new window
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Essays and criticism examining the lives of great authors and their works throughout history.Character summaries can be found by searching for The Great Gatsby. The default results will be "Reference" articles. To the right side of the page are filters, including Character.Gatsby | Nick | Tom | Daisy | Jordan
Literary Reference Center (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Criticisms, synopses, and reviews of authors and their works, full-text poems, short stories, and classic novels, as well as full text from over 400 literary journals.

Databases for Researching the American Dream

Suggested Databases
Thinking About Keywords

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Multi-disciplinary database; full text of articles from over 5,300 journals, magazines and newspapers, plus image collections.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Complete historical full text of all issues of peer-reviewed journals in a wide range of humanities and social science fields. (pronounced jay-store)
Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
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Provides topic overviews as well as collects a variety of sources, including statistics, reference materials, journal articles, news articles, images, and audio broadcasts.
Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
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Over 100,000 e-book titles covering a full range of academic topics. General reference works are also included.
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Nearly 575 full-text publications, including some 550 peer-reviewed journals, in psychiatry, psychology, and related fields.
Psychology (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new window
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Find authoritative periodical content supporting research in all fields of psychology.

When you're trying to figure out what to search with, keep in mind that although the state of the American dream actually is an explicit topic of research and polling, that's not the only search term to try! What are aspects of the American dream (or obstacles to it) that you could search for?

For example,

success, achievement
- What is success? What are the measures of success? Income, social standing, personal satisfaction...?
social mobility or class mobility, upward mobility
discrimination
wage stagnation
business or home ownership
education opportunities or access to education
identity
"self-made" person

Search Several EBSCO Databases At Once

Click on "Choose Databases."

Select any and all databases that are appropriate for your search.

Choose Databases list - 2 columns, each with a check mark.

Proceed to create your search, or switch to the Advanced Search mode, like normal.

Search page with highlighted note above search bar,

E-Books (No, You Don't Need to Read Them Cover to Cover for Research)

New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream?

American Dream Dying: The Changing Economic Lot of the Least Advantaged

The Success Ethic, Education, and the American Dream

Tensions in the American Dream: Rhetoric, Reverie, or Reality

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream

The American Dream: A Cultural History

Lurching Toward Happiness in America

Database Tips

Full Text: not seeing where to read an article? Check your filters for a full-text limiter.

Advanced search: AND = less results, more specific. Example: stress AND college students AND finals

Advanced search: NOT = less results, but not as few as AND. Example, school NOT public.

Advanced Search: OR = more results. Example: college OR university.

Accessing the Databases

Access online library materials through the library databases!

To access the databases from off-campus, you will be prompted to enter your 14-digit library barcode or your LSC email/password.

Don't have a barcode but want one? Request a barcode number online.

Discovery Search Search (nearly) all the library collections from one place, including articles, books and e-books, videos, and more.
more...less...
You can search without signing in, but once you click to access something, you'll be prompted to use your library barcode number or your LSC username/password.
A-Z Database List Sort & filter by subject and content types to find the specific collection you need.

Workshop Recording

If you want to skip around:

0:40 Pre-Research & Topic Development Recap
2:20 Creating Search Terms
3:27 Databases intro
4:05 AND/OR/NOT, parentheses
7:19 Database demonstration in Academic Search Complete
11:20 Wildcards
12:28 Quotation Marks
13:49 Proximity
15:33 Recap
15:59 All database work basically the same using these principles
17:29 Ask us about your specific research problem!

Assignment | The American Dream & Great Gatsby Character Analysis (Black, Trainer): Research