English 102 students, hello from Thrift Library! Whether this is your first academic research experience or you feel like a seasoned pro already, we are here to help you elevate your work. Being a novice researcher is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. Hopefully this research guide can offer some helpful tips and ideas to support your projects. 

Elizabeth Sanford

Ms. Sanford
Research and Instruction Librarian
Subject Specialties: Christian Studies, Business, English, and Modern Languages
P: (864) 231-5743 E: esanford@andersonuniversity.edu

Book time to meet with me.

Accessibly from Thrift Library's homepage, LibraryDIY is a collection of tutorials that address all aspects of undergraduate research. The Home and Help page offers a table of contents, so you can find answers to your specific questions. 

Highlights include:

• How to Narrow Your Topic
• Thesis Statements
• How to Read Scholarly Materials
• Choosing & Using Keywords
• Citation Tools

The Thrift Library Catalog can be accessed from the library's Homepage by selecting the box labeled catalog. The search box provides one-stop searching for books, ebooks, articles, and more. Once signed in, users are able to renew items, request physical materials from other PASCAL libraries, and save searches. 

Scroll down on the catalog's front page to view video introductions to searching with the catalog. 

The catalog is a great place to start, but is still important that users conduct searches in discipline-specific databases. The catalog and individual databases will provide different sources with the same query. Additionally, there are a few databases that are not indexed in the catalog.

Thrift Library has a new AI-powered research tool called Research Assistant. Users can access the beta version of Research Assistant through the top menu on the library catalog. 

The Research Assistant uses natural language queries -- this means that you can search using a question like you may when using search engines like Google.

After you enter your research question the Research Assistant will locate the top five most relevant scholarly sources that it has access to and provide a overview of the topic. Research Assistant is searching all of the material that it has access to, which may or may not be content that Thrift Library subscribes to. 

Learn more about Research Assistant by watching the tutorial on the front page of the catalog. 

​​​​The following databases are strong choices for interdisciplinary research. Access these and many others on Thrift Library's website under Databases A-Z.

Tip: To view databases by discipline, use the Group By: Category function.

• Academic Search Ultimate Full-text journal articles in social sciences, humanities, multicultural studies, education, and more. (Ebsco)

• Academic OneFile Full-text articles and citations on all topics. (Gale)

• Britannica Academic Online Edition A comprehensive reference resource used to access Encyclopædia Britannica plus Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, magazines and periodicals, and many other research tools. Great place to get the introductory material needed to start your research.

• IGI Global IGI Global disseminates vetted quality content within 11 core subject areas, including Business and Management; Computer Science and Information Technology; Education; Environment and Agriculture; Government and Law; Library and Information Science; Media and Communications; Medicine and Healthcare; Science and Engineering; Security and Forensics; and Social Sciences and Humanities.

• JSTOR JSTOR is a digital library of journals, academic ebooks, images, and primary sources. As of July 2024, includes Artstor: More than 2.5 million digital images - painting, sculpture, photographs, buildings, decorative arts, fashion, landscape, graphic design, architectural drawings, manuscripts, floor plans, and much more

To locate more specific results, you may want to search in a discipline-specific database. Ask yourself, what kind of scholar would be researching this topic? 

For example, you may be researching narcissism and its impact on relationships. What kind of scholar is also researching this topic? Probably psychologists and sociologists. You may want to look through databases that index scholarly research in psychology and sociology. 

You can access discipline-specific databases by filtering the Databases A-Z page. Select Group by>Category.

​​​​The following databases are strong choices for news sources. Access these and many others on Thrift Library's website under Databases A-Z.

Tip: To view databases by discipline, use the Group By: Category function.

• News: Gale OneFile A one-stop source for the day's news and searchable archives. With InfoTrac Newsstand, you can search a collection of 2,300 national, international, state and local newspapers as well as another 1,000 other formats - magazine, newsletters, newswires, blogs, etc. (Gale OneFile)

• Newspaper Source Plus Provides the latest news from the leading national and international news sources. (Ebsco)

• Newswires Provides near real-time access to top world-wide news from the Associated Press. The collection includes AP Top News, WorldStream, Financial News, AP Online, US Politics & Government and 50 State Reports. (Ebsco)

• Regional Business News This site provides comprehensive full text articles for more than 50 regional business publications. (Ebsco)

• U. S. Newsstream A full-text news source that provides access to The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, CNN Newswires, and Huffington Post. Also provides access to local and regional news sources.

As you conduct research in the library, you will come into contact with two types of credible sources: scholarly sources and popular sources. Both can be credible and trustworthy, but they serve different purposes. 

Since scholarly and popular sources serve different purposes, it is important to know when to use one over the other. 

If your professor has instructed you to use peer-reviewed sources, you should stick to scholarly sources. 

However, if you need to supplement the evidence from peer-reviewed scholarly sources with information about current events, you should include references to credible popular sources. You can find credible news sources through the library's news databases (see Databases>News Sources in this research guide.)

For an overview on citations, including the resources listed below, visit LibraryDIY.

• MLA Online Handbook Access an online version of the MLA handbook. 

• MLA Handbook A physical copy of the MLA handbook is available at Thrift Library.

• MLA Tutorial Anderson students have access to tutorials on information literacy topics, including an overview on citations using

Thrift Library recommends using Zotero for reference management.

Once you save an article, book, webpage, etc. to Zotero it will generate citations in the style guide of your choice. It also does so much more! With Zotero, you can...

• Save PDFs and Snapshots of your sources to folders in your library
• Annotate PDFs (when you copy and paste text from an annotated file it will automatically add quotation marks and the author, date, and page number in a parenthetical citation.) 
• Search your entire library
• Generate bibliographies 

Zotero is a desktop app that also has a web library for when you need to access your library away from your primary computer. 

Zotero also offers browser connectors that enables users to save sources with a single click. 

More information about reference management as well as other available tools can be found in LibraryDIY under Citation Tools.