Civics: Amendment Project Resources: Research

The library has several databases that may be helpful for you as you work on this project. Here are three we recommend. Make sure to look for articles with the label "Overview" or "Reference Articles". If you would like to check out some of our other databases, click on the link at the bottom of this box to see all of the databases.

Tips for Searching the Databases

• Before you search come up with a short list of search terms you might want to use. These can include synonyms and alternate wordings in case your first search terms don't turn up a lot of results.
• Start with more general search terms and then get more specific as you learn more about your topic. 
• If you're having trouble finding good sources, think about searching more broadly or narrowly
• Use the Advanced Search option to get better results -- this will allow you combine multiple search ideas at the same time.
• Use words like "and", "or", and "not" to separate search terms. For example, "China" AND "climate change".
• Use "quotation marks" to search for a whole phrase together.
• Use an asterisk (*) to search for related terms. For example, searching for "librar*" could return results about a library, libraries, a librarian, or librarians.
• The databases don't work exactly like Google search does--you may have to try out a few different search terms before you find one that works well.

Always make sure you get the stable link and citation information for your articles. Look for something that says "Citations", "Citing", or "Cite this article", and then copy the Chicago Turabian citation OR export that citation directly into Noodletools. Copying the URL from the URL bar isn't a good idea--it often won't bring you back to the article later.