FYS (First Year Seminar) - Previous Version of Guide

Ideally, you should find articles, books or other scholarly sources that provide a scholarly point of view about your issue that you can discuss in your paper. For example, you might find a paper that discusses why a certain problem like microagressions or underemployment (etc.) is important. Try to get more than just plain facts and statistics out of these sources -- look for arguments that you can critique and analyze!

Pacific Library - Boxer Search 
Pacific's library search includes millions of items, including both electronic and print material. All of our books and e-books are here, as well as about 70% of the journal articles that we have paid access to. This is the quickest way to get into sources that you can access immediately, without having to guess whether you'll be able to get the full text. Tips: 

• You can limit to "Full Text Only", Print Books only, Ebooks only, etc. Use the tools on the left hand.
• If you're looking for full-text articles, keep clicking through on the results until you see a link to a "PDF" or "Full Text"
   

Google Scholar

This database gathers sources from many other databases into one centralized location. It will find nearly any academic book or article that has been published. The downside is that it is so large, that the items you really want to find may be buried under dozens of irrelevant sources. Also, there may be many articles that you cannot actually open. Tips: 

• Are the articles you are finding too old? Change the date range using the tool on the left side:
  
• If you find one really good article/book, you can find others like it by clicking on the "Cited By" or "Related Articles" links:
  
• Become a Google search expert by using their advanced operators

JSTOR 
This database is especially good for topics in history, political science, English and the humanities. Its biggest negative is that most of the sources in it were published 3+ years ago. Use the Advanced Search for best results! If you scroll down on Advanced Search page, you can pick specific topics to search within. Example: 
 

Project Muse
This database is very similar to JSTOR but it covers a slightly different set of journals. It's especially good for humanities research. The "Research Area" box on the left side lets you narrow down by subject area. Example:

Dissertations and Theses
This database is an amazing resource for dissertations (which are the final papers of Ph.D. and Master's students, typically 50-250 pages long). This is a great place to find CUTTING EDGE research on recent issues. These sources are generally very difficult to find except through this database! Example:

CQ Researcher
This database contains very nice overviews of policies/research on big issues like Gentrification, Assisted Suicide, Homelessness, Attracting Jobs, etc. Note: The overviews themselves are a bit broad and encylopedia-like, but each overview includes an extensive bibliography at the end, which lays out many other key sources very nicely! If you find a good article here, it may point you towards 20 other high-quality sources that you can use to write your paper. 

Many More Options...

Many other specialized databases are available through the library. We have organized them according to academic field, like Biology, Anthropology, Environmental Studies, and many more! You can find them linked on the home page of the library: