Cerritos College

Within the guidelines of the assignment given to you by your instructor, select a topic that is of interest to YOU. Once you have selected a topic for your paper, use the general reference books available in the library to get background information on your topic. Reference books such as the encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks listed below are a good starting point for your research because they help you become better acquainted with your topic. The GaleNet Databases, RAND California, and Facts.com are online resources that also provide useful background and statistical information.

Once you have done your background research you will be ready to conduct more comprehensive research using books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet.

Books can provide a broad overview of a topic or in-depth information. Use the Library Catalog to find books available in the Cerritos College Library.

You can search for books by author, title, subject, or keyword. Listed below are some Library of Congress Subject Headings used in the catalog for books relating to some of the utopias vs. dystopias themes that are listed above. Use these terms to Search by Subject. Remember, this list is by no means conclusive.

Selected Subject Headings:

You can also do a Word search to find books on your topic. If you find one book that is useful to your research, click on the Subject links to see others on the same subject.

Journals and magazines usually provide the most current information on a topic. Journal articles are more scholarly or professional while magazine articles tend to be shorter and more general. Newspaper articles, while not usually scholarly or professional, can give you the most current news and some additional facts on your topic. To find articles on your topic, use one of the online indexes listed below. They are available at http://www.cerritos.edu/library/http://www.cerritos.edu/library/e-resources.html. Use subject headings similar to those used to locate books. The Library also has print indexes that must be used to find older articles, generally anything published before 1985.

See the Library Internet Resources handout for a complete description of our online resources.

The Internet can be a valuable source for supplementing the information you have gathered from books and periodicals. It is important that you evaluate the information you get from the Internet to determine if it is reliable and useful to your research. A few Internet sites that may be useful are listed here.

Big Brother
http://www.shire.net/big.brother/

Google Subject Directory
http://www.google.com/dirhp

Librarians’ Internet Index
http://lii.org/

Social Science Information Gateway
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

Corporate Governance
http://www.corpgov.net/index.htm

Environmental Justice
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/ej2.htm

Health Care Information Resources
http://www-hsl.mcmaster.ca/tomflem/top.html

Language Policy Web Site and Emporium
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/

National Coalition Against Censorship
http://www.ncac.org/

U. S. English, Inc.
http://www.us-english.org/

LS 10/2005

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