English 225 - Taylor

Finding a topic?

Think of controversial topics in today's headlines

• Gun Control
• Climate Change
• Opioid Epidemic
• Energy Policy
• Immigration
• ISIS

The library has several series of books which summarize both sides of an issue. These may help you develop a topic and help you start your research. To find these books go to the library catalog, click on the word Advanced in the top of the screen. In one of the dropdown menu boxes change the box to read "Series," then enter any of the series titles listed below for a list of books in that series.

"opposing viewpoints"

"contemporary world issues"

"social issues primary resources"

"current controversies"

Try these databases -

CQ Researcher is noted for its in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy. You can browse CQ Resercher by topic, track specific controversial topics by date or look up topics in their Pro/Con section. Pro/Con offers succinct articles by experts arguing for and against given topics. Click on the image below to go to this database.

Issues and Controversies offers accurate discussions of over 250 controversial topics in the news supplemented with chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, contact information, and bibliographies including primary source documents and news editorials. It has a subject index and a section featuring pro/con articles on a number of topics.

You may find these guides useful for doing Government and Public Policy related research. From these sites you can also search or browse other research guides.

PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service): Articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, research and conference reports, etc. concerning public affairs worldwide. Some full-text, also links to full-text via SFX.

Political Science Complete:PSC provides indexing and abstracts for 2900 journals,and full-text articles for 500 top-ranked scholarly journals. Also includes reference works and professional conference papers. Its coverage consists of topics such as law and legislation, comparative politics, political theory, international relations, humanitarian issues, and non-governmental organizations.

CQ Weekly: A weekly publication with non-partisan political analysis of Congress. Identifies major legislation, the issues and the players. All articles are full-text. The cover story for the week is titled "What Way to Turn on Transit Issues." There are several related articles available in this resource.

JSTOR: Provides full-text access to the archives of core scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Dates of coverage vary by journal title. All go back to the very first issue published, but most have a "moving wall" embargo that excludes issues from the most recent X years (where X can be anywhere from 1 up to 10 years, depending on the particular journal; most are in the 3 to 5 year embargo range). JSTOR does link out to other databases for more recent content

Google Scholar (with U-M Ann Arbor MGet It Links): The Google Scholar search engine that searches for scholarly publications with the added feature of MGetIT links that connect you to the online and print versions held by the University Library.