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INTR 250X - Resilience in Today's World

Introduction

This Research Guide will offer you some tips to help you find resources for your assignments in INTR 250X - Resilience in Today's World. It will introduce you to finding items in the Molstead Library's collection including how to use Primo search to find books and ebooks and suggest a few databases to start with when looking for journal articles. It will provide the guidelines for your two assigned papers and introduce you to the APA and MLA citation styles. As always, if you have questions your friendly Molstead librarians and staff are here to help in the library or via Chat, Phone, or Email.

 

Topics and Keywords

Your first paper is a topic paper about a resilient person. Some suggested topics include:

  • Prisoner of war
  • Military veteran
  • Trauma accident victim
  • Resilient women in history
  • Someone you know personally (Use at least two books or articles on a subject pertaining to resilience to support your paper.)

Your second paper involves an interview of someone in your community who you feel has developed and/or demonstrated resilience.

Some suggested keywords* to help find library resources for your first paper:

  • Resilience
  • Trauma
  • Autobiography
  • Biography
  • Survivor

These are just some of the keywords you might try to find books and e-books related to your topic. Think about your specific topic and make a list of keywords relevant to your research.

Once you have results, look on the left side of the results page for the "Refine my results" limiters. Try selecting results from different subjects to see if you can find more relevant resources.

*Keywords are the words or phrases that are what your topic is most about. The library's search engine, Primo, uses individual keywords and combinations of keywords rather than natural language like Google or DuckDuckGo.

For best results, try different combinations of keywords to get more accurate results. For example: resilience trauma autobiography

More advance search tips can be found on the Advance Searching page of this Research Guide.

A Few Suggested Databases and E-Book Collections

These are just a few of the databases available in the Molstead Library collection. You may want to check out some of the others available at the link below.

Complete List of A-Z Databases

Primo Search

As you search for books, it may help to think "inside the box" by being very specific (names or places) and "outside the box" by being more general (topics/issues).  "Inside the box" searching allows you to find detailed materials, while "outside the box" thinking keeps you from missing high quality sources that do not have a much detail in their search records.

Since you are only keyword searching, make a list of possible search terms before you start.  For example, "influenza" may bring back different results than "Spanish flu." "Influenza outbreak" will bring back different results than "influenza epidemic."

If you are struggling to find books at Molstead Library using the Primo search box, try searching for books through more familiar sites, such as Amazon.com or WorldCat.org.  You can InterLibrary Loan books from other libraries for free!