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English151&152 / PLT 155 Community & Local Research

Starting Your Community Research

Researching local and community issues may be challenging. Just because you know of a local issue, that does not mean that there is scholarly research readily available on it. You will likely have to use local newspapers or other local periodicals (Chicago Tribune, Northwest Herald, etc.), or interviews, etc. for specifics on recent and very local topics.

For more scholarly sources, consider researching the broader topic (and your sub-points/arguments) for background and other examples of your topic in different communities. How has the problem been managed elsewhere? What causes and effects have been researched? What pieces of that can be applied to the local situation? Once you have a understanding of the larger topic you can apply that research back to the local issue, developing conclusions and suggestions based on the research you have found.

The library is here to help you along the way! If you have a research question, use the Get Help from a Librarian tab to start a chat or schedule a research appointment.

Using eBooks

Online reference books (eBooks) are helpful for finding background information because they contain a lot of information about your topic all in one place. eBooks can be found in our library databases and are available at any time without a library card. Here are just a few of our eBook databases to get you started.

For more eBooks, please visit our A to Z Databases and sort the database Types by eBooks.

Databases for Related Research

The databases below are good for finding articles on your topic.  Other databases may be useful for your topic as well, depending on the topic!  For example, research on local organic farming may begin with a look at articles in local newspapers with Newspaper Source.