Guides: ENG 101 English Composition (Julie T. Quarles): Home

Researching Controversial Issues

When you see something of interest, note the terminology that is used in the discussion. Try to isolate key concept words or key phrases to use when searching the online catalog and electronic databases.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window
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A complete one-stop source for information on social issues. Users have access to viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, interactive maps, videos, streaming audio, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles.

From immigration to stem cells to texting-while-driving, Opposing Viewpoints in Context delivers 13,000+ pro/con views, 1,000+ court case overviews, and thousands more topic overviews, biographies and profiles.
CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the most current and controversial issues of the day with complete summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies and more, published weekly. Each single-themed, 12,000-word report is researched and written by a seasoned journalist, professionally fact-checked, and footnoted to facilitate further research. A feature called Hot Topics provides shorter reports on 20 of the most popular subjects. CQ Researcher's Archive goes back to 1923 and includes reports from its predecessor publication, Editorial Research Reports.

NYTimes.com

Pepperdine Libraries now provide full complimentary access to NYTimes.com, New York Times mobile apps, and New York Times in Education to Pepperdine students, faculty, and staff.

Access to NYTimes.com provides:

Tools to stay informed on the latest in world and national news, business, the arts, technology, travel, opinion, science, medicine and more
Breaking news articles, blogs, videos and interactive features
The option to save articles of interest and share via email and social media
Visit this link to create a free NYTimes account. Sign up using your Pepperdine e-mail address.

Wikipedia vs. Reference Books

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively; anyone with internet access can write and edit Wikipedia articles. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or, if they choose to, with their real identity.

Gale Virtual Referance Library (GVRL) and Oxford Reference Online are collections of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources; these trusted, authoritative reference works are available 24/7

Locating Scholarly Articles

This database features a box you can check to limit your search to scholarly/peer-reviewed articles.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Provides full text coverage to nearly 9,100 journals, including over 7,900 peer-reviewed titles in the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, education and more. Full-text coverage dates back to 1985 and is updated daily.

Scholarly Databases

These databases contain scholarly journals in a wide variety of subjects.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Access the journal archives Arts & Sciences I, II, & III, IV, and over 40,000 ebooks on the JSTOR platform; book chapters and journal articles are cross-searchable. JSTOR is an extensive archive of interdisciplinary journals and books, covering subject disciplines in Arts, Business & Economics, History, Humanities, Law, Science & Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Religion.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 600+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more. Updated continually.

Researching Newspapers and Current Issues

Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. For an overview of how to use Nexis Uni, visit this page.

This database is only available to current Pepperdine students, faculty, and staff.
U.S. Major Dailies (ProQuest Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
U.S. Major Dailies provides access to the five major U.S. national and regional newspapers: New York Times (1980 - present), Washington Post (1987 - present), Los Angeles Times (1985 - present), Chicago Tribune, (1985 - present), and Wall Street Journal (1984 - present).
Los Angeles Sentinel (ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
Includes full-text of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper from 1934 to 2005.
Newspaper Source This link opens in a new window
Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for 40 national (U.S.) & international newspapers, including The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Times (London), Toronto Star, etc. The database also contains selected full text for more than 330 regional (U.S.) newspapers, including The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, The Miami Herald, Daily News (New York), San Jose Mercury News, etc.

Full text television & radio news transcripts are provided from CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, NPR, and others