ENG 101

Professor: Elizabeth Pierce
Library Instruction Session
Librarian:  Alice Harrington

Goal: Students will be introduced to information resources and searching techniques that will help them with their assignment of writing a persuasive essay.
 

1st Step: Choose a topic/Get background information.

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper is choosing a topic that is of interest to you and that you can narrow or broaden appropriately.  Browse through these materials to get ideas/background information:
 

Encyclopedia of Social Issues	Ref HN 57.E59 Volumes 1-6	Provides an introduction to current social issues.
CQ Researcher	Located in the Bound Periodicals section on the Main Floor of the Library.  Current year issues are held at the Library's Information Desk.	Each issue of this weekly magazine profiles a controversial topic.  We own this title from 1991 through present.

 

2nd Step:  Locate Books.
 

ALEX: MCC's online library catalog.  It provides students with titles of books, journals and multi-media sources along with their call numbers.

Roaring Cat: To locate books in Rochester area public, academic, medical and business libraries*.

World Cat: To locate books in libraries around the country*.

 * If MCC does not own a book that you would like, we can request it for loan from another library.  Click here to   fill out an online Interlibrary Loan submission form.
 

3rd Step:  Locate Magazine and Journal Articles.

The following tools are considered to be full-text.This means that in most cases, you can retrieve the entire article directly from the databases.

EBSCO - MasterFile Select

Electric Library

InfoTrac OneFile

Wilson Select

Dialog@CARL

4th Step:  Locate Web-Sites.
 

Best Information on the Net - Hot Paper Topics: From O'Keefe Library at St. Ambrose University

Gallup Organization

National Issues

Public Agenda

Speak Out.com

For any unanswered questions, please stop by the Library's Information Desk and ask a Librarian for help.