Food, Nutrition, and Culture

This guide will assist you in developing a research topic, locating information, evaluating information, and citing your sources

Where to Search

So where do you search to find the best resources to write your research paper?

Don't start with Google to do your research. You aren't going to find the scholarly sources that are best for your research there because scholarly research costs money and isn't freely available online for the most part. Luckily, the library pays to access a lot of scholarly research and makes it available through a variety of different search tools.

Search Everything

Search everything searches does just what it says - it searches all of the library's collections at once. This can be great to get a comprehensive overview of what is out there on your topic but it can also be a little overwhelming because there is so much. It is a great place to start your research.

Research Databases

If you want to narrow down your search a little more,  you can do a search in one database at a time. Here are some that I recommend,

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another resource for finding scholarly research. Look on the right hand side of the screen for the "Full-Text@MCLA" links that will bring you to the article in one of our databases. You can also look for the free PDFs listed on the right hand side. The best tool in Google Scholar is the citation link under each result. This will show you other articles that cited that article in their references. If you find a great article, be sure to check what else has cited it for more relevant results.

google scholarGoogle Scholar

 

Video & Audio News Sources

Audio and video can add a different dimension to your research that you might not get with print resources. Below is how to find these resources in the Gale databases, a link to our documentary film database, and some tips on searching YouTube.

Find Audio & Video in Gale Databases

When you search the Gale Databases you can narrow your search by audio or video. Use the tools on the left hand side of the screen to narrow your search as in the screenshot below.

Searching YouTube