Find Your Sources - Assignment | Texas Policy Project (Henry) - Research Guides at Lone Star College

Be Wary: Evaluate Your Sources Closely

Is your source
Recent? Reliable? Relevant?

Is this source up-to-date? Is it about my topic, and does it go into enough depth? Does it come from an authoritative source? Is the information accurate (and are there citations given to back it up)? And why was this information written in the first place (to inform? persuade? entertain? upset?)?

Academic Sources from Databases

Psst -- what's a database?

In its most basic sense, a database is just a selection of information designed for you to search and retrieve stuff from it. Amazon is a database you're probably familiar with: it's limited (only contains things you can buy through them) and retrievable (you can search and filter your results to find what you're looking for).

The library databases contain reputable, reliable sources of information to support researchers like you! This means everything from digital encyclopedias (like Credo), ebooks, scholarly journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, streaming videos, statistics, and more.

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.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
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Full-text, balanced, comprehensive journalistic reports and analysis of current and controversial issues of the day.
Communication & Mass Media Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Full text from over 500 journals for communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields.
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)

Even More Databases:

Consider which disciplines apply to your specific topic when choosing your databases.

Research Databases (Main Page)

Databases (Searchable List)

Governmental Sources from Agency Websites

You can streamline your search for government resources with a little Google trickery to limit your results to a specific domain. Try out the searches below to see what happens when you limit to .gov or to texas.gov.

Texas Legislature Online: Senate Committees
Explore Texas Senate Committees and see what bills they've brought up to address their areas of concern.

Policy Reports by Think Tanks/Interest Groups

Hardly an exhaustive list: these are examples of the kinds of groups meant by this option.

Brookings Institute
Research topics include international development, health and social policy, domestic economic policy and security. Searchable content.
Public Agenda Online
Public Agenda provides unbiased research that bridges the gap between American leaders and what the public really thinks about issues ranging from education to foreign policy to immigration to religion and civility in American life.
Texas CASA
Texas CASA is a leader in working to assure sound public policies in Texas on issues affecting the child welfare system, the well-being of children and youth in state custody and other policy areas related to our mission.
Texas Legislative Study Group
The LSG, as an official caucus of the Texas House of Representatives, is a non-partisan, non-profit public policy organization committed to developing and advancing sound public policies that benefits all Texas families.
Public Citizen: Texas
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization emphasizing environmental reform, consumer safety, ethics, and equity.
Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute
Established to implement conservative public policies in state government.

Mainstream Media Sources

US Major Dailies (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
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US Major Dailies provides access to The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. The content is available by 8 a.m. each day and provides archives stretching as far back as 1985.
Texas Reference Center (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Articles from periodicals, reference books, and newspapers on Texas history, culture, and life, biographies of important Texans, and more.

Google News
Current news from 1000s of newspapers around the world

New York Times: Subscription Access This link opens in a new window
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Find both news and reviews as well as access to historical NY Times issues dating back to 1851.

First time user: To get access, you need to first register for an NYT account.
1. Click the link. You will have to enter your LSC library barcode.
2. Select Create Account and complete registration fields. Use your LSC email address!
3. Once you have an account, you may access NYTimes.com and NYT mobile apps like any subscriber, or go through this link but select "log in."

Note: Site passes will expire after 365 days. To renew, you will have to activate a new pass by repeating this process.

If Google Chrome shows a warning about this link, hit Ignore. You must use the proxy to get the special access.

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.
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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.

Making the Most of Advanced Search

These databases will generally start you out with a basic one-field search, which is okay... but we can do better with the Advanced Search.

When you're constructing your search, think about how to break your topic down into little bite-sized chunks. You can't just write "Civil War Sherman burns Atlanta" -- well, you could... but it's more effective to break it down, as shown below:

As you add on additional fields for search terms, they'll be joined together by AND by default. This "AND" is the most powerful limiter: the articles you get back have to have term 1 AND term 2 AND term 3 to end up in your results.

If you notice you're getting a lot of articles about Gettysburg instead of Atlanta, you can add another field and switch the AND to a NOT (NOT Gettysburg) to help get rid of those results.

This is where your background research really pays off!

All those terms and phrases and ideas you developed before? They all can feed the Advanced Search machine. Be sure to consider synonyms for your different search terms so you can swap them out to play with your search. (E.g. "college" but also "university" or "higher education")

Plus, because you did that background research, you're starting off with a clearer idea of what information you need to find. This means you'll know what you need to put in those search fields to narrow it down from the massive and generic "Civil War" to "Civil War AND United States AND Sherman AND Atlanta."

Assignment | Texas Policy Project (Henry): Find Your Sources