BHS Database Guide How to Find Great Information Quickly Lesson Objectives Students will identify an information problem, select sources, and extract relevant information.

Information Problem Defined You have to find evidence from the modern world to support your claims and possibly address counterclaims in an argumentative essay. Types of Evidence: Examples (Specific Instances Used to Illustrate a Point) Facts (Things that Can Be Proven True) Statistics (Facts in Number Form) Expert Opinions

What do you look up? Search the prompt for key words You are going to search for evidence that supports one of the claims below. Look carefully at the prompt you have selected and steal some key words from the prompt to research and/or think of an overall topic that the prompt suggests. Sometimes it helps to put a few extra words in front, such as “Examples of ____________” or “How America//society/people/the justice system/classism _________________.” 1. America will never achieve true racial and social equality. II. Society will always fear those who are different. III. People should be entitled to their opinions, even if those opinions hurt others. IV. Within our justice system, all people are treated equally in court. V. "Classism" can be just as damaging as racism.

Library Resources For this assignment, Use the BHS Media Center web site to access current databases.

A database is a digital collection of information Databases are a closed source, so they are more scholarly and more credible than most websites! Use Utah’s Online Library(formerly Pioneer)

The Reference Section of Utah’s Online Library has a number of great databases. For this assignment, I suggest using Gale Reference Collection 9-12. Gale’s databases have an autocomplete option that can help you search for information.

Gale DAtabases Gale has a lot of great information located in different places. Global Issues in Context, InfoTrac Newstand, InfoTrac Student Edition, and Opposing Viewpoints in Context can all help you find the information you need.

InfoTrac Newsstand and Infotrac Student edition If you’re looking for very recent examples, try InfoTrac Newsstand. It searches through hundreds of newspapers worldwide. Use the autocomplete suggestions to help with further searching. If you type in your topic, it will suggest similar or narrower topics you can click on to find new information. If you want in-depth information, try InfoTrac Student Edition. This resource lets you search through popular and scholarly magazines. The information is older than newspaper articles, but it is also better researched. If you use this database, I suggest going to the advanced search button, where you can select full-text articles and modify the search dates. For this site, it might be helpful to add some words in front of your topic. “Examples of ____________ . . .” might be a good way to begin/narrow your search.

Global Issues in Context This resource organizes information about a lot of problems in the world today by topic. You can do a standard database search in the Search box. More importantly, you can click on the topics to access a lot of different articles that can help you write your essay. I suggest clicking on the Browse Issues link to see an alphabetical list of information available in the database. When you find an issue that matches what you’re looking for, click it to find links to a lot of different articles. There are many topics related to society, freedom of speech, the law, and racism. When you click on a major topic, it sends you to a page full of media about the issue. The featured content section contains the most important articles about the topic. You can also find links to newspaper articles, magazine articles, audio, and video related to the subject.

The Best for last: Gale Opposing viewpoints in context This might be the only database you use for this assignment. Gale Opposing Viewpoints takes popular debate topics in the world today and shows you articles that are for and against the topics in question. You can do a standard search in the Search box to find information. Like Global Issues, information is also arranged by topic, so click browse issues to see all of the topics available. The Featured Content section contains great articles related to your topic. If I were you, I’d start here. It also links to other magazine and newspaper articles if you cannot find enough information from the featured content.

Gale Onlinelibrary.uen.org Gale Reference Collection has a number of really cool links. Infotrac Newstand lets you search newspaper articles from all over the world. Infotrac Student Edition is their standard magazine database, like EBSCO. Global Issues in Context leads you to information about current problems and debates in the world today. Opposing Viewpoints in Context shows you arguments and differing viewpoints about the arguments. This site organizes debates by subject, so much of the research is already done for you.

Research Tip: The Find Option If you want to see if an article has exactly what you’re looking for, choose the “Find on Page” option from Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. You can find it in the settings or press ctrl + f (hold down the ctrl key on the keyboard and press the letter f key). Type the “must-have” word you’re looking for in the Find box, and it will highlight the words inside of the article for you. Read all of the sentences above and below the highlighted words to see if it has what you need. If you want to use it, go back and reread the article, taking notes on the information you can use in your essay.

Citations (Links on media Center Web Site) Easybib.com is a web site that helps students build their own works cited pages in MLA and other formats. Sometimes they need a few minor changes (punctuation mainly) to comply with the formatting, but it does most of the heavy work for you.  Citationmachine.net is another website specializing in creating citations for you. Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) is considered an authority on formatting and can help you find and format source information. Use the navigation bar on the left to select APA or MLA guidelines. The Weber State Writing Center has some great downloadable handouts about MLA format. They can be found under the Writing Center Handouts section.

Works Cited If you click the “Citation Tools” option to the right of an article in Gale, it will show you exactly how to write it down on your Works Cited page according to MLA format.

Grab a Bookmark. It has the Username and Password for searching from home. Good luck! Let me know if you need help.