Background information provides a general overview of a research topic, including important terms and concepts, relevant names of people or places, and dates of specific events. Finding background information can help you locate keywords for searching databases and identify more specific areas of your topic that you may want to research further.
Updated regularly. A database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources. Fully searchable across all files.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
Encyclopedia articles contain general facts and basic overviews. Check with your professor before citing an encyclopedia article, as they are not peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
Find reports, written by journalists, that talk about controversial issues.
Updated weekly. Explores a single "hot" issue in the news in depth each week. Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology. Every report is written by an experienced journalist and features comments from experts, lawmakers and citizens on all sides of every issue with numerous charts, graphs and sidebar articles.
Find collections of information on different sides of controversial issues.
Updated daily. Provides full text access to differing points of view on current social issues. Brings together viewpoint articles, contextual topic overviews, government and organizational statistics, biographies of social activists, court cases, profiles of government agencies and special interest groups, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as links to more than 1,800 reviewed and subject-indexed web sites.