LibGuides: FYE: Inventing Mexico: First Steps

What am I doing?

Here are a few preliminary things to begin:

What is the assignment? What are you being asked to do? What kind of information do you need to find?
- WHERE does that information exist?
Pick a topic
- Brainstorm everything you already know (or think you know) about that topic.
Ask yourself "What do I want to know?" or "What am I curious about?"
Think about where background information might be...
- biographies
- encyclopedia entries
- books or ebooks
- magazine articles
- news articles
- podcasts
- artwork
- scholarly materials
- criticisms

NEXT, BRAINSTORM (or concept mapping)

Now you have a topic, a brainstorm of keywords, and a general idea of what you are looking for. Let's practice searching:

Choose one of the databases to practice this search in.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a comprehensive list of journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Humanities Source This link opens in a new window
Provides access to journals with worldwide content pertaining to literary, scholarly, and creative thought.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles from scholarly journals published by Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Indiana, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Oxford and Penn State university presses, as well as the presses of the Universities of Hawaii, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary, scholarly, full text journals covering the social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.