Latest Posts

Latest Posts

Political Science Questions

Political Science Questions

, , Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
This summer, we’ve been exploring what goes into good, academic research.  And although there are plenty of great basic skills and techniques usable for any discipline – which we covered in the first week – each subject taught at IU East has its own unique character and needs.  Here, we’ll look at the sources for your research in political science. Like with most other academic topics, there are a number of excellent databases that will give you great research articles – start with a database like ProQuest Political Science or Military and Government.  Another great source is CQ Researcher (despite being named ‘Congressional Quarterly, it is produced by journalists, not the US government), which has incisive, deep reports on a … Continued
English Questions

English Questions

, , , Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
If you’ve been following this blog, you know we’ve been examining how to do in-depth research in each of the major academic disciplines IU East offers.  There’s a lot that is the same for any type of scholarly research, and we started off looking at those general techniques.  But every field of study has its own, unique needs, and to be a great researcher, you need to learn them.  This week, we’ll look at English and literature. Obviously, we have a lot of great general purpose databases for locating research articles – some of these include MLA International Bibliography and ProQuest Language and Literature.  But another great source is JSTOR, a database that has journal articles dating back more than … Continued
Law and Criminal Justice Questions

Law and Criminal Justice Questions

, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at how to get the most out of scholarly resources for each discipline taught at IU East, and this week we’ll look at criminal justice.  Many of these methods will build off of the general techniques we explored earlier, but some are unique to this field. Like medicine, law is another type of information that you don’t want to leave to the free web.  There’s a lot of misinformation and commercial material out there, and it can be hard to determine fact from advocacy.  Fortunately, there are plenty of good, reliable tools – and all of our criminal justice-related sources can be found here.  Databases like SocIndex or ProQuest Criminal Justice are … Continued
Education Questions

Education Questions

, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
These last few weeks, we’ve been exploring where and how to do deep, scholarly research in the various disciplines, and this week we will look at education.  Building off the general techniques we explored earlier, there are a lot of great sources for education research, and tools that meet the unique needs of teachers-to-be. For research articles, powerful tools like ERIC and ProQuest Education are the best sources to start with.  If you’re interested in teaching theory, Professional Development Collection is an excellent choice.  And depending on the grade level you’re interested in, there are even more databases designed for you – Primary Search for elementary grades, Middle Search for middle school grades, and MAS Ultra School Edition for high … Continued
Nursing Questions

Nursing Questions

, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
Recently, we looked at how to do basic research.  Those techniques will serve you well any time you’re searching for information, but if you’re doing nursing research, there are several great tools available to you at IU East that will help you with this very specialized topic. Medicine is one of the fields where reliance on scholarly, vetted resources is the most important.  While there are a few trustworthy medical websites on the free web, such as PubMed and the Mayo Clinic, in general medical advice on the free internet should be avoided at all costs.  The practice of medicine is too complex, and situations too linked to individual patient histories, to trust an anecdotal story someone put up on … Continued