English 102 College Writing and Research
Getting Started
Use the suggested resources in this web guide to develop your bibliography for English 102. For more tips on searching the databases, visit the Frequently Asked Questions tutorial.
Find Books
To locate books at UWM, use the PantherCat online catalog. Search the UWM Libraries' collection with keywords that describe your topic. Use AND/OR/NOT to create a search string. Here is a step by step process for turning your topic into a keyword search string.
| Step 1 | Sample Topic: | fast food |
| Step 2 | Narrower Topic: | fast food as a cause of health problems |
| Step 3 | Keywords: | fast food as a cause of health problems |
| Step 4 | AND, OR, NOT | "fast food" AND health |
| "fast food" AND americans AND health | ||
| "fast food" AND health AND diet | ||
| Try a variety of search terms and put phrases of two or more words in quotes, like"fast food." | ||
Find Articles
In general, you can use your keyword search string to find articles in magazines and journals. The following databases provide citations and abstracts to college-level periodicals including newspapers, magazines and professional or scholarly journals. Use Academic Search for a variety of topics, Health Source for health and wellness, and social science for family, cultural or quality of life topics. Most college-level bibliographies include scholarly articles. All three of these databases have the option for limiting a search to scholarly or peer-reviewed sources. Use keywords to create a search just as you did in the library catalog.
- Academic Search
- 1984-present; indexes over 3,400 scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers in the areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education, and multi-cultural studies. Full-text is available for 2,000 journals starting with January 1985. Guide
- Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
- 1975-present; 600 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Also featured are abstracts and indexing for over 850 journals. Guide
- Social Sciences Full Text
- 1983-present; indexes more than 600 international, English-language periodicals in sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, political science, and law. Full-text is available for 169 journals starting with January 1995. Guide
You may also select from the UWM Libraries suite of databases. Visit the Subject Guides for suggested resources by subject.
Primary Sources & Current Events
In addition to articles in magazines and journals, you may wish to do what many researchers do, browse or search historical newspapers. The New York Times is considered the "paper of record" for the United States and can serve as a good source for social history-- it will help you to understand historical concepts from the "first hand" perspective as well as review current topics in historical or developing context.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers - The New York Times
- 1851-three years ago (For more recent articles, use ProQuest Newspapers); Searchable full text starting with the first issue. Full image digital reproductions for every page from every available issue. Includes display and classified ads; comics and cartoons; photos, maps and graphics; editorials and commentary.
You may also wish to search for current news. Please see the Current Events guide.
Government Information
You may wish to use the United States Government or the State of Wisconsin as a source of information. Government agencies publish much of their information on the WWW. Visit the UWM Libraries guide to using Government Documents for more information . You may also wish to visit the website of an agency that is associated with the subject of your research. For example, if you are interested in the health effects of fast food, you might visit the USDA. If your topic is related to careers, perhaps the Department of Labor, etc.
Finding Information from a Bibliography
Your course reading probably includes a list of several books and articles. These books and articles contain ideas that have been developed and written through research. Your research paper or annotated bibliography may be based on a theme found in these sources. Therefore, one important source of research may be the bibliography of a book or article in your course reading. Here are some examples of works cited in a bibliography:
Books: search PantherCat by author/editor or search by title.
Alfino, Mark, and John S. Caputo. McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture. Westport: Praeger, 1998.
Government Reports: search PantherCat by title
A Time to Act: Report of the USDA National Commission on Small Farms. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1998.
Articles in Journals: search Citation Linker by journal title (also known as source):
Cheang, M. Older adults' frequent visits to a fast - food restaurant: nonobligatory social interaction and the significance of play in a "third place". Journal of Aging Studies v. 16 no. 3 (August 2002) p. 303-21.
The UWM Libraries journal collection includes print journals and electronic journals. See the Frequently Asked Questions for a step by step explanation of finding a journal at UWM.