ENG 137: Young Adult Literature and Literacy: Historical and Cultural Context

There are many ways to research topics and issues related to your book. The following databases are a good place to start, in part because they provide access to news stories (in the case of US Newsstream and Access World News) or contain a tremendous amount of information on a huge variety of topics (Academic Search Premier).

For overviews of topics, reference books, like encyclopedias, can be perfect, as they give you an overall sense of a social movement or topic or idea in a succinct manner. Similarly, the library might also have books on your topic that provide a general overview. Try a search in our library catalog to find reference books and other library books.

Quite often you will be expected to use "scholarly" or "peer reviewed" or "academic" sources. Here's what that means: 

• The author is a scientist or scholar, not a journalist. The author usually has the highest degree in their field (like a Ph. D.) and works at a college or university. 
• The audience is other researchers, scientists, or scholar. The language is fairly complex and assumes prior knowledge of the topic.
• The source references the work of other researchers. Look for bibliographic notes, references, or works cited.  
• Scholarly sources are usually published by academic publishers (like Oxford University Press); articles appear in scholarly journals, often with titles like Journal of ....

Though many databases let you limit a search to scholarly or peer reviewed articles, those limiters aren't foolproof. As an example, they will include book reviews, which are not reporting original research. Take a look at "Anatomy of a Scholarly Article" from North Carolina State University Library.

Peer review means the source has been reviewed prior to publication (usually without the reviewers knowing who wrote the source and vice versa); reviewers will then recommend if the work should be published. Many - but not all - scholarly sources have been peer reviewed. To check if your scholarly article has been peer reviewed, you can visit the journal's website.

There are several ways to find scholarly articles related to your novel and its cultural and historical context. If you search Academic Search Premier (linked below), you can click "Peer Review" under the "Limit Your Results" options. You can also browse the research guides related to your topic and search the recommended databases. 

For pedagogical resources, try the three education databases linked below.

This 10-volume set provides excellent overviews of issues and events, organized decade by decade. Reference books are located on the main floor, Beck Hall side.