FINDING SOURCES FOR YOUR RESEARCH
Yes, we are going to say it: Start your research quest on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a fantastic place to BEGIN looking at the many opinions available about your topic. It will be a good place
to gather the seeds of information you need for a broad picture (the context) of your topic. However, you do not want to
base your argument, or your evidence, on what you find on Wikipedia. Use it only as a spring board—a jumping off place
for your real journey toward support for your topic. Sometimes Wikipedia can lead you to valuable sources that can be
used in your research. Look at the sources and links provided in the “citations,” “references,” and “further
reading” sections near the bottom of the Wikipedia page. You will also learn more KEY WORDS and SEARCH
TERMS that can be used in more scholarly databases.
But don’t stop there: Go to more scholarly sources.
To enhance and support your understanding of your research topic, you need to find credible background information.
“Scholarly” sources means finding information from an expert, or scholar, on the subject who has written and published
the article in a peer reviewed source such as an authoritative journal or magazine. Therefore, no Wikipedia, no
Britannica, no World Book, no random website, no teenager’s blog, no angry citizen’s comments posted under an article
on the local newspaper’s website.
How many sources will you need? In research, we read ten times as much as we cite. You should read much more than
you actually quote. This is why you do a works consulted.
Begin with Cobb Virtual Library databases available through the county.
1. Go to www.harrisonhigh.org
2. Under Student Support, choose Media Center
3. Under Online Resources, choose Cobb Digital Library
4. You will be redirected to cobb.mackinvia.com
a. School: HARRISON HIGH SCHOOL, KENNESAW, GA
b. User Name: your student number
c. Password: read
5. From the VIEW GROUPS tab, choose one of the groups that matches your research question. You may have
to try several groups.
6. Within the group you have chosen, search in any of the databases that pertain to your research question. You
may have to try several databases.
7. Don’t give up! Try many combinations of key words and search terms.
Look through the following trustworthy publications. There are others, but these are a start.
 http://www.project-syndicate.org/ Project Syndicate is an online source for original op-ed commentaries on
politics, economics, science, and culture.
 http://www.npr.org/ NPR (National Public Radio) produces and distributes noncommercial news, talk, and
entertainment programming. Or you can listen to WABE 90.1 FM in Atlanta.
 http://www.newyorker.com/ The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism,
essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry, as well as popular culture, eccentric Americana, world politics, social
issues, and single-panel cartoons.
 http://www.theatlantic.com/ The Atlantic is a literary and cultural commentary magazine focusing on foreign
affairs, politics, and the economy, and cultural trends.
 http://www.economist.com/ Economist is a source for the analysis of world business and current affairs,
international news, world politics, business, finance, science and technology, cultural trends and special reports.
Find a BOOK (you know, with a cover and pages).
Many books have been published about just the thing you are looking for.
 www.amazon.com is an online bookseller that allows a look inside some of its copies.
 http://books.google.com searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned and stored in its
digital database.
Libraries in towns (public libraries) or universities (academic libraries) can generally be defined as “collections of books and/or other
print or nonprint materials organized and maintained for use.”* Patrons of those libraries can access materials at the library, via the
Internet, or by checking them out for home use. Libraries exist to make their collections available to the people they serve. Search the
Cobb County Public Library at http://www.cobbcat.org/ .
Archives also exist to make their collections available to people, but differ from libraries in both the types of materials they hold, and
the way materials are accessed.
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Types of Materials: Archives can hold both published and unpublished materials, and those materials can be in any format.
Some examples are manuscripts, letters, photographs, moving image and sound materials, artwork, books, diaries, artifacts,
and the digital equivalents of all of these things. Materials in an archives are often unique, specialized, or rare objects,
meaning very few of them exist in the world, or they are the only ones of their kind.
Access to Materials: Since materials in archival collections are unique, the people (archivists) in charge of caring for those
materials strive to preserve them for use today, and for future generations of researchers. Archives have specific
guidelines for how people may use collections (which will be discussed later in this guide) to protect the materials from
physical damage and theft, keeping them and their content accessible for posterity. Example: Checking out a book from a
library causes it to eventually wear out, and then the library buys a new copy of the same book. Checking out the handwritten
diary of a historic figure from an archives would cause the same physical deterioration, but the diary is irreplaceable.
Just a few Local Resources:
Links to several Atlanta-based archives
Atlanta Newspaper Archives
List of Archival Associations
Kennesaw State University Archives
Atlanta National Archives
Georgia Archives
Browse the website of the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/index.html. The Library of Congress is America’s national
library, and the world’s largest.
Visit the website of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at http://www.archives.gov/. NARA oversees the
preservation of United States federal government materials. There are two additional resources that can be accessed through NARA:
Check the Repositories of Primary Sources website at http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html.
This site lists over five thousand links to archives around the world.
Explore the Smithsonian Institution Archives at http://siarchives.si.edu/. The Smithsonian Institution Archives is the record keeper
of the Smithsonian—collecting, preserving, and making available the official records of the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research
centers, and the National Zoo.
Finally, if you MUST, at least use the smarter versions of the broad search engines.
 www.scholar.google.com is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature
across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.