LibGuides: Explore Topic Ideas: Home

Browsing for Ideas and Searching for Background Reading

These databases may help you find a topic that interests you. Current Issues Databases feature articles with different viewpoints about topics related to current events and social issues. Specialized Encyclopedias and Dictionaries include articles with background information and topic overviews. You might also use the information you find in these databases as sources for your research project.

Current Issues Databases

Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Dates vary. Multi-discipline. Full text articles from over 2,700 publications, including many peer-reviewed. Gale in Context
Points of View Reference Source This link opens in a new window
Essays presenting multiple sides of current issues, along with articles from political magazines, radio and television transcripts, and primary source documents. Full-text. EBSCO

Specialized Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Online reference library containing the full text of hundreds of reference titles, including dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopaedias, quotations and atlases, plus a wide range of subject-specific titles, featuring in-depth articles, images, sound files, animations, and videos. Full-text.
eBooks (Gale- previously GVRL) This link opens in a new window
1998 - Present. Multidisciplinary specialized encyclopedias and reference sources. Full-text. Gale
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
Provides the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past, traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from international English language sources. Full-text.