Possible Catalog Searches
Here are some example searches on your class topic in the library catalog:
Gather Background Information
Use broad reference materials to find out background information about your topic - this will help you narrow your future searches and will also give you keywords that will help you find the most relevant sources. Credo or the Encyclopedia Britannica can be good places to start for that first step in research.
- GVRL - Gale Virtual Reference Library Encyclopedias This link opens in a new window
Search many top encyclopedias on multiple topics for background information on your topic. Articles in these encyclopedias are written by experts. - Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference provides access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology.
Recommended Reference Books
Try these sources for background information and a brief overview of key ideas related to your chosen topic.
Guns in American Society: an Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, 2nd Edition [3 Volumes] by ISBN: 9780313386718Publication Date: 2012
The gun debate : an encyclopedia of gun control & gun rights in the United States by Publication Date: 2016
Quirk, Paul J., and William Cunion. "Gun Control." Governing America: Major Decisions of Federal, State, and Local Governments from 1789 to the Present, vol. 3: Government, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Affairs, Facts on File, 2011, pp. 852-859.
Class resources
- 1st library session for Day's class - slides
- 2nd session for Day's class - slides
- 3rd session - Plagiarism and Intellectual Property - slides
Recommended Books & eBooks
Check out these books in print and/or online for further reading on your topic once you've gotten started.
The Positive Second Amendment by Call Number: KF3941 .B56 2018ISBN: 9781107158696Publication Date: 2018
Hunting : a cultural history by Publication Date: 2022
- Search the catalog for more books
Search for books and other materials that you have immediate access to through Transy.
Recommended Websites
- Gun Regulation and Legislation in AmericaLibguide of resources put together by HeinOnline
- Violence Project - Mass shootings; gun violence"The Violence Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center dedicated to reducing violence in society and using data and analysis to improve policy and practice."
More on the project
Stats
- Pew Research Center This link opens in a new window
"Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions." - Gallup Polls This link opens in a new window
Statistics and polling company. "We use data to drive decisions and make a difference across the world, in workplaces, classrooms and societies."
Tom W. Smith and Jaesok Son. "GSS - Trends in Gun Ownership in the United States, 1972-2014" NORC at University of Chicago. March 2015.
- Violence Project - Mass shootings; gun violence"The Violence Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center dedicated to reducing violence in society and using data and analysis to improve policy and practice."
More on the project
Scholarly Articles
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Includes searchable PDF content going back as far as 1887. - JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides articles from 1,900+ scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, and sciences and around 5,000 ebooks. Coverage dates for journals are from the very first issue of each journal (the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries for many) and continues to 2 – 5 years prior to the current year (moving wall). - HeinOnline Academic This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline Academic includes more than 2,700 journals covering political science, criminal justice, law, women’s studies and access to comprehensive coverage of fully-searchable U.S. federal government documents. Search both state and federal case law with Fastcase, a leading legal research service that provides “best-case-first” tools for fast research. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is included. It also includes classic treatises as well as rare items found in only a handful of libraries around the world.
- HeinOnline's Gun Regulation and Legislation in AmericaCollection of legal articles and other sources
- Pew Research Center This link opens in a new window"Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions."
Search guns to find research on gun attitudes and use. - Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of disciplines. When you are logged into your Transy Google in a Chrome browser, it will map back to library subscription databases for full-text access to some articles. - PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
American Psychological Association’s (APA) renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 2.5 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the early 1800s. Journal coverage, which spans from 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,400 periodicals in more than 27 languages.
Citation Information
- "MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL, Purdue U Writing Lab, 2018.This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (8th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
Evaluation exercise
What do you think?
- Is it scholarly?
- Would you use it?
Federick, Ashok. "Finland education system." International Journal of Science and Society 2.2 (2020): 21-32.
Lynch, Kellie R., et al. “‘People Will Bury Their Guns before They Surrender Them’: Implementing Domestic Violence Gun Control in Rural, Appalachian versus Urban Communities.” Rural Sociology, vol. 83, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 313–46
Murphy, Mary. “Re-Imagining the Hunting Camp: Feminism, Huntresses, and Community.” Communities, no. 167, Summer 2015, pp. 58–59.
M. NILS PETERSON, et al. “Evaluating Relationships Between Hunting and Biodiversity Knowledge among Children.” Wildlife Society Bulletin (2011-), vol. 41, no. 3, 2017, pp. 530–36.
Bernstein, Jennifer and Alex Brown. "Women, Hunting and the Future of Conservation." The Gender Policy Report. University Minnesota. November 20, 2018.
Your Librarian
Section Topic
Guns in America: Guns play a significant, central, and divisive role in American culture and in the American economy. In fact, we live in a nation with more guns than citizens, not even counting military and police weapons, so it's not surprising that gun-related news stories appear practically every day. Neither is it surprising that citizens who own guns and those who don't frequently disagree strongly about ways to improve gun safety and to reduce gun violence. Additionally, there is widespread ignorance about gun violence in our country. Two primary aims of this course are to reduce that ignorance and to improve student safety. Another critically important aim is to help students learn to intelligently and calmly discuss divisive topics. (Note: this course is not anti-gun. It is, however, anti-gun-violence and anti-ignorance.)