The purpose of this guide is to familiarize you with the best resources for research on your chosen Great American.

	Getting Started
	Choosing your great American
	Books
	Articles
	Citing Your Sources
	Current News Assignment

Getting Started

For this assignment, you will write a seven page paper on a great American of your choice. You should include the contributions of your individual to US history, politics, civil rights, or economic or infrastructure development.

This is meant to provide a general research process to write your paper:

1. Identify topic - Choose your Great American
2. Collect your sources - you must use at least two books and two journal articles as sources in your paper.
3. Write your paper
4. Cite your sources - Using the style of your choosing, cite direct quotes, summaries and paraphrases in the text of your paper, and provide a bibliography or works cited list of all the materials used in your paper. Why cite? Check out this tutorial from UCLA.
   1. APA Style Guide
   2. ASA Style Guide
   3. Chicago Style Guide
   4. MLA Style Guide

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Choosing your great American

Browse the catalog for biographies:

• Judges United States Biography
• Politicians United States Biography
• Presidents United States Biography

Or you can search the catalog for a topic area and biography. For example:

• "civil rights" AND biography
• suffrage AND biography
• economist AND biography

Browse by time period or broad topic:

• American Memory Project, Library of Congress

Browse these websites for personal webpages of elected or appointed officials:

• California State Assembly
• California State Senate
• Office of the Governor, California
• Supreme Court of the United States
• United States House of Representatives
• United States Senate
• The White House

Books

Books provide overviews of issues and virtually always have bibliographies, endnotes or footnotes that direct you to other information, including scholarly articles. To search for books, use a library catalog. Depending on how much time you have, you have a couple of options:

• CSUSM Library Catalog 250,000 books available today.
• Circuit 3,000,000 books from other San Diego colleges, 1-3 day delivery .
• WorldCat 52,000,000 books from libraries world-wide, 5-10 day delivery. Use Get-It and Interlibrary Loan

The best way to find books on your individual is to search for their name as subject heading. For example:

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Articles

Journals include some of the latest research in the field.  They're a good source for finding very detailed information on your topic.  It's best to start with a couple of books before diving into journals.  To find articles, you need to start with a research database- you can search hundreds or even thousands of journals at once.

VIDEO: Learn how to find articles (approx. 6 min.)

• Academic Search Premier This scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more.
• JSTOR Contains complete full-text back files (EXCEPT for the latest five years) of core scholarly journals in such areas as sociology, history, economics, political science, mathematics, African-American studies, Asian studies and others.
• PAIS An important index to political, economic, and social issues in current debate.

What is a scholarly article?

VIDEO: Scholarly v. popular articles (approx. 4 min.)

See an article you want in one of these databases?

• Look for the link to the full-text - HTML or PDF
• Click on to get the full-text or request it through interlibrary loan (free).
• Ask a librarian for help

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Citing Sources

As you write your paper, you'll need to cite passages and ideas from the sources you've found. Check with your professor which style is preferred for this assignment.

	APA: Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. 5th ed. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, 2001. APA CItation Style Help Library Copies (BF76.7 .P83 2001)
	Chicago manual of style. 15th ed. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003. Quick Summary (, 42k) Library Copies (Z253 .U69 2003)
	MLA handbook for writers of research papers. 6th ed. New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2003. Quick Summary of Bibliography (, 175K) Citing in your paper (, 131k) Library copies (LB2369 .G53)

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