Epidemics and Culture Presentation
This is a guide to researching and citing references that will help you strategically search for reliable sources around your topic and successfully cite them.
While this guide can work for any type of research project you need to do, we'll be focusing on these aspects of the required outlines that call for multiple "substantial,reliable" sources and the Keywords and Annotated Bibliography assignments:
1.) Finding resources, starting points, evaluating sources, and search strategies
2.) Generating an Annotated Bibliography of your relevant sources
3.) Reviewing APA and MLA citation practices
Not sure where to start with your research? Searching for "substantial, reliable sources" can involve looking in several places, inside and outside the Library. We'll look more into this under the "Finding Sources" tab, but here is a general overview of starting points:
One of the best access points for reliable, scientific, and scholarly publishing is in
Library Databases: repositories for different general and specialized subscriptions to resources like magazines, newspapers, academic and scholarly journals (where we'll find most peer-reviewed articles) as well as other kinds of literature like eBooks and reference materials.
Library Catalog: collection of Shoreline CC's materials including books, eBooks, DVDs, articles and magazines
Open Access or free, trusted sites: reliable health information can be found in government (local, state, federal) collections of demographic information and statistics, and when considering authorship and editorial review, news sources (written or video) can inform your project.
Recommended Databases and Starting Points for Health, Public Health Research:
Shoreline Community College One Search (includes entire Library catalog)
Academic Search Complete (database)
MEDLINE (database, also overlaps with PubMed)
PubMed (Open Access)
PLoS (Public Library of Science, Open Access)
CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)
National Center for Health Statistics (CDC)
Washington State Department of Health: Health Statistics
Global Epidemics (through Brown University)
KFF (for health policy research)
In order to complete the research aspects of this assignment, we're going to break it into three parts:
While you're researching, remember: all good research, and all research really worth doing, is lead out of our authentic curiosity and an ability to embrace the Exploration of encountering things we maybe didn't expect to find. And in an information economy where the most important knowledge is accessible to so few of us, it's really valid to be frustrated at how much academic literature is still behind paywalls and can feel inaccessible and out of reach.
This is where your Shoreline CC Librarians come in! It's our job to help you throughout this whole process, whether you don't know where to start or if you're trying to narrow down to that last piece of the research puzzle.
You can stop by our Reference Help Desk in the Library anytime between 10am-close for drop-in help with a Librarian, or you can email us at Library@Shoreline.edu. You can make a one-on-one librarian appointment to meet over Zoom or reach out to our 24/7 Chat service where there will always be a Librarian at the other end to help.
