Reference and Collection Development Librarian
Explore a Topic
Read the various points of view about your topic in these databases. Use the texts as a way to begin thinking critically about your issue. You will find ideas that support your position as well as opposing viewpoints. You may even read something that makes you think about something you hadn’t considered.
- In Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window Opposing Viewpoints offers material to support differing views to help develop critical thinking skills on thousands of current social topics in the forms of primary source documents, statistics, websites and multimedia. Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues, including racism, capital punishment, global warming, and voting rights with reference sources, newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly journals, court cases, government documents, viewpoints, maps, images, audio, video and websites.
- Issues & Controversies This link opens in a new window Featuring a dynamic design and a wealth of features, Issues & Controversies helps researchers understand today's crucial issues by exploring hundreds of hot topics in politics, government, business, society, education, and popular culture. Issues and Controversies provides up-to-date, in-depth and objective information on prominent and hotly debated issues. It combines objective analysis with clear explanations of opposing points of view. Chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information augment the balanced, accurate coverage of current and historical events.
- SIRS Issues Researcher - Tunxis Campus This link opens in a new window SIRS Issues Researcher is an editorially curated pro/con database designed for middle and high school students, university undergraduates, instructors, and librarians. Leading Issues pages provide a framework for understanding and analyzing over 360 complex social issues with overviews, essential questions, viewpoints, and editorially selected primary and secondary sources. All content is 100% full-text and selected from authoritative magazines, newspapers, photographs, books, statistics, infographics, websites, and more.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window CQ Researcher offers in-depth, unbiased coverage of political and social issues, with regular reports on a wide range of topics including: health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, the U.S. economy, crime, and civil liberties. This acclaimed and award-winning weekly publication provides a balanced view of today's most pressing social, political, and economic issues. Each weekly report covers the given topic in a non-sensationalized manner, and many reports feature a pro/con debate, highlighting both sides of the argument. Access over 700 hot topics with pros and cons for your research papers and projects.
Books and E-books
Books can provide:
- Background information
- Overview of a big issue
- Detailed analysis of a topic
- References that lead to other sources
And you don't necessarily have to read the entire book! Check the table of contents and the index for the pages pertinent to your paper.
Browse the shelves by entering your keyword in the search box below
Evaluate Websites
Think about the sources you are using in your paper.
If you are not sure about a website, judge it based on the CRAAP test.
Currency - When was the information published or last updated?
Relevance - Does the information answer your research question?
Authority - What are the author’s credentials?
Accuracy - Are there statements you know to be false?
Purpose - Is the author’s purpose to sell, persuade, entertain, or inform?
Magazines, Journals, & Newspapers
Articles are good sources for:
- most recent research or information on a topic
- coverage of a very narrow topic
- coverage of current events
- contemporary accounts of past events and research
Use these Tunxis databases to find texts that support your argument:
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.