EN 121: English Composition

• Come up with a statement --a short sentence--that describes your topic
• List words that relate to your topic, including names of relevant people and places.
• Think about how to broaden your search; can you research a whole group of people or type of community --for example, neighborhoods, organizations, religious groups, family dynamics-- not just your specific one?
• Do you have an opinion about your topic? Have you considered a different point of view?
• What kind of information would you like to find: Statistics? Interviews? Journalists' reports of events? Scientists or historians perspective on the topic?

When you use a library database to do your research, you are generally using reliable, well-vetted, multi-perspective sources. Google is great, but it doesn't actually have free access to everything (shocking, right?) and it's often harder to clear the clutter of ads, "fake news", and other distractions.