Charlestown High School Research Assignment Resources
This web file has been created to introduce you to the kind of resources students can expect to find in a college library, and specifically to the resources available to you at the Bunker Hill Community College Library. Although the World Wide Web is a powerful tool for connecting students to a wide variety of resources, it is not the only window of information. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the various types of BHCC library holdings so you can make informed decisions about how and where you will get your information for this research assignment. The library has an extensive book, magazine/journal, and electronic database collection.Consider what you need before you begin your search for related information. A good place to begin is to consider the details of your assignment.
Ask yourself, how you plan to conduct your research, sort through the information you find, select the most appropriate items, and evaluate the credibility of the materials you plan to use.
More Questions...
Let's consider the topics you've selected so we can strategize about your approach to looking for related information.
Prison Life, Inmates Rights, Release and Recidivism. (Still working on question).
How does homelessness effect teens and what action steps can I take to improve the situation?
Why is teen dating violence becoming acceptable behavior in our society today and how can I prevent it from happening to me?
Why is there a strong connection between mural art and social justice in California Latino communities and has this connection been embraced by Boston's Latino communities in their fight for social justice?
What impact has the African American community had upon the Massachusetts court system and how does it effect my connection with the court system today?
Why is job shadowing an effective component of a school-to-career pathway program and
how does it impact a student's selection of a future career?
- What types of sources suit your topic best? Is your topic a current issue that has been in the news recently, or is it more of an issue that warrants examining with a broad and historical perspective? For example, the rise in homelessness in this country has been getting a fair amount of news coverage in recent years, which should indicate to you that you would find a good deal of information on this topic in newspapers. A topic such as the African American experience in the Massachusetts legal system, however, would be served well by examining it from more of a historical perspective, in which case books would be very helpful. Because of their length, articles often provide either specific and detailed views on a given topic, or they provide general overviews. Books often examine subjects at much more length and from many perspectives.
- What keywords will you use to locate the information you need? Think of a keyword as the "key" terms used to express your subject. For example, the topic of mural art and its connection to the social justice experience can be stripped down to the terms mural art and social. Your next step would be to brainstorm and think of as many synonyms as possible for these two terms. Mural art can also be referred to as graffiti and street art. Social when used in the context of "social justice" or "social experience" would lead one to think also of the words society, sociology and sociological.
- How many sources do you need to identify? The more sources you consult, the more confident you can be that you've given your topic more than just a one-sided approach.
- How will you take notes, create an outline and thesis statement, and pull everything all together? The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has an excellent online workshop on how to write a research paper.
- How will you cite what you find? You will want to take notes as you conduct your research, but in order to avoid plagiarism you must also note where you are finding specific pieces of information. Use the following link from Duke University for an easy-to-follow guide on how to cite from various types of sources.
BHCC Library Resources
The BHCC library WWW page: http://www.noblenet.org/bhcc/ To find a book, use the BHCC online catalog. You may search the catalog by SUBJECT or KEYWORD, as well as by AUTHOR or TITLE. The Keyword option allows you to combine your search terms. See what titles are listed when you use the Keyword search option for the terms homelessness and America and then compare the results with a subject search of the term homelessness. If you scroll through the list of subject sub-headings under "homelessness", you will find that there is a proper heading called "Homelessness -- United States". Here is what the catalog lists when you view the subject heading.
Finding Magazine Articles -- What is the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature?
The Readers' Guide indexes magazine and journal articles on a variety of current topics of general interest. It focuses on popular magazines rather than academic journals. In addition to indexing periodical articles, the RGPL contains a book review index, citing reviews of various general interest books.How do I use the RGPL?
The best way to begin is by noticing the dates covered in the index being considered, familiarize yourself with the list of magazine titles included in the index, and locate the page designed by the publisher to detail what the abbreviations and placement of details means in terms of recognizing the author, title and other information in the citations. Notice that the RGPL has a subject and author arrangement. If you look under a heading the index doesn't use, a "see" reference gives the preferred heading. Occasionally "see also" references will lead to related topics. Let's get ourselves oriented to the layout of the library by locating the RGPL. If you are not familiar with the BHCC library, take a look at the library map. You'll see the index tables are to the right of the librarian at the Information Services desk.
BHCC Holdings List
When using the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, it is helpful to keep close by the list of magazine titles subscribed to by the BHCC library. Look at the online version of the periodicals list. The BHCC library does not subscribe to every title that is indexed in the RGPL. Recognizing the titles that the library keeps on hand as you identify citations of interest in the index will save you from searching for things that the library does not own.Specialized databases available from on-campus:
Lexis-Nexis -- click on the Guided News link to search for newspaper articles from major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world. Note that you have the option of searching for your chosen "keywords" in the headline, headline/lead paragraph, and full-text fields. Look at the difference in the number of hits retrieved when you search for the phrase dating violence in the headline field versus the full-text field. Think of how this search option will help you if you find that you are getting either too many or too few results with your subject keywords. For an electronic magazine index with some fulltext articles, use Ebsco. The Academic Search Premier database within Ebsco covers a wide variety of sources in the areas of social sciences, humanities and business.InfoTrac is another database you could use for more fulltext resources. The Expanded Academic ASAP and the General Reference Center Gold databases within InfoTrac cover the humanities, social sciences, popular culture, and current events.
Ethnic NewsWatch is a database covering 200 publications in the ethinic, minority and native press.
FACTS.com is a database providing information on events, issues, statistics, and people.
As always, before using any online search tool, pause for a moment to consider the tool you're using. How does the search tool work? It's always a good idea to start off by clicking on the question mark or the help feature so you can look for search tips unique to that database, as well as specifics about how to cite information taken from that source.
What resources can you use from if you are on the BHCC campus? What resources can you use from if you are not on the BHCC campus?