Juniors--Digging Deeper into Intolerance

Hello, juniors!  Getting pretty comfortable with the library, right?  Last week all English 11 students visited the library for our semester booktalks.  Hopefully you found a book that interested you--I know I enjoyed talking about books all day!

Mrs. Reynolds sharing booktalks with 4th period English 11 classes

Today you're in the library to learn about some resources you should use/shouldn't use for research.  Specifically research of intolerance in history.

It's important to use databases--databases are reliable, specialized search resources that include filtered results.  For this specific project, consider these databases:

American History Online--link on top left; username greenwoodchs, password woodmen

World History Online--link on top left; username greenwoodchs, password woodmen

American Memory (Library of Congress)--actual historical documents, recordings, images, etc.


Think beyond Google, which will give you millions of hits (with the majority being unrelated or unreliable).  Try one of these instead:

Google Scholar--focuses on scholarly literature like articles, theses, books, abstracts, U.S. court documents, etc.  It gives research publications that are based on the results of research or studies.

Sweet Search--a search engine specifically for students with research-filtered results


Avoid sites like these:

Example 1--Although the answer is sufficient, we don't know who is answering or where they received their information.
Example 2--Watch out for advertisements, authors with no credentials, and generalized "about" sites
Example 3--Website colors demonstrate their "seriousness."  Also watch for source credits; when missing, you as the reader are unaware how the article's author found the information.