How do I use library resources to successfully complete a research paper?

Research papers are like creating a puzzle, piece by piece, keyword by keyword, you find the information you need.  By piecing that information together you assemble a complete, well written research paper.  When finding information remember to cite where you found it.  By citing everything you avoid plagarism and leave a road map for someone else to follow.  This helps others see where you found your information.  For this particular paper you will be using MLA style (Modern Language Association).

Thesis:

Formulating the Thesis statement can be difficult.  After perusing the databases for information start formulating a thesis statement.  This link from the University of Kansas may help http://www.writing.ku.edu/~writing/guides/thesis.shtml 

Citations:

Online Citation Creator - My suggestion for creating citations is http://www.bibme.org/ 

Databases have citation creators in them.  just copy and paste into a Word document for your Works Cited.

Print sources:

     Locate books that are housed in the VVS Media Center:

          Follow the VVS link to search the catalog.

Periodicals (published on a regular schedule) are magazines or newspapers.  Below are databases VVS subscribes to that allow access to this form of information.  Stop in the Media Center to obtain a brochure of passwords to access them from home.  The database page can be found here or by following the links below.

Periodical sources:

  newspaper articles from around the US and the World

 magazine articles

  magazine articles
  

 hybrid of biographical information and magazine articles

Encyclopedias are also subscribed to by VVS.  At this time we subscribe to two, most likely your people are recent and will not be in the encyclopedia but you might find other information that would be useful:

Encyclopedia sources:

                  and