ENG109: Creative Writing

Here's a time-saving list of the best resources for your class!

Spring 2025 Assessment

1) Starting Your Research


   Start Your Research Here:   

  1. The search box above finds the library's books and e-books, and does a broad, shallow meta-search across 100 library databases. 
    • Sign in with your college username/password to get best results and save searches. 
  2. Then, search specific library databases below to fill in any gaps. 

2) Fill in Gaps with Specific Databases

These reference databases offer overviews of your issue, and offers ideas to narrow your topic. 

  • Log in with your college username/password if prompted.
  • These offer e-book chapters, popular (newspaper, magazines) and scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles, and other resources.

The ProQuest Central database searches millions of articles from newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals. Use it to fill in gaps in your research.

  • It includes well-respected newspapers like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many more. 
  • Click "Peer reviewed" to limit the search to scholarly articles.

General Databases

These databases cover a wide range of world events and topics:

Scholarly Sources

Here are links to two article searches and an example of a peer-reviewed (scholarly) article.

  • Click the "Peer-reviewed" limiter to get only scholarly articles.

This is an example of a scholarly article, found by clicking "Peer-reviewed" on the search page.

How do you know a "Scholarly Article" (also referred to as academic articles or peer-reviewed articles) when you come across one?

Articles in different fields may differ slightly. A scholarly article comparing two works of literature will lack data, graphs, and discussions of methodology. A scientific paper about a new medication SHOULD have all of these things:

   Parts of a Scholarly Article: An abstract Journal title and volume number Author(s) with degrees/certifications in their field In-text citations or footnotes Introduction, body paragraphs, a conclusion Works cited/ references/bibliography

Library Database Searching

Library Database search Tips 1) Advanced Search AND overlaps subjects Called Boolean logic George Boole (1815–1864) (image shows two overlapping circles) sleep AND learning 2) truncation Looks for all word endings Star is wildcard symbol asterisk (*) - shift/8 psych* finds psychology psychological psychologist etc. 3) Phrase search Search two or more words together Makes search more precise Use quotation marks "community college" "New York" "United States"

Put it all together:

Here are database-friendly searches, with unnecessary words removed:

Instead of:  "What are the causes of test anxiety?"  
Use: "test anxiety" AND cause* 

Instead of:  "What's the effect of the pandemic on mental health of college students?"
Use: COVID-19 AND "mental health" AND "college students"

Instead of: "Does using social media increase anxiety among teenagers?"
Use: "social media" AND anxiety AND teen*
 

Database searching summary:

Accessibility Statement