Other Guides You May Find Useful
The Lyman Beecher Brooks Library (LBBL) can connect you with hundreds of databases to help you build general knowledge, to perform background research, to connect your with scholarly resources, and even find some entertainment with streaming movies and audio.
Many databases are specific to content type or discipline and will have specific best practices and strategies for getting the best search results.
The recommended resources below include popular and scholarly resources that are intended to be used from the brainstorming through academic writing phases of research and also some general databases that include documentaries and films.
Note that you may need to authenticate through OpenAthens using your MyNSU login credentials in order to access content. For more information, visit the following guide How to Access Databases from Off-Campus.
Recommended Resources
- Credo Reference
Credo Reference provides full-text online access to hundreds of multidisciplinary reference book collections, including art, history, law, medicine, psychology, technology, bilingual dictionaries, and encyclopedias through a one-stop search platform. Search results often include articles from a wide array of publications and frequently present subject coverage from multiple perspectives. Using Credo Reference to approach a topic from different viewpoints can be a great way to expand your familiarity with the topic and it can help you develop new arguments and observations for your research.
- Oxford Reference Premium
This reference database includes access to almost 400 dictionaries and encyclopedias of fully-indexed, cross-searchable works published by Oxford University Press with detailed information across a broad subject range of topics.
A Dictionary of Social Research Methodology by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781003503507Publication Date: 2024This accessible book offers a detailed guide to a wide range of methodological concepts, both those of a more philosophical kind and those that are more technical in character: from constructionism to critical realism, regression analysis to grounded theory, odds ratios to triangulation.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781119168607Publication Date: 2018With contributions from both established and ascendant scholars, the Companion seeks to present current research on social movements in all its diversity.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781119429401Publication Date: 2019The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology, Second Edition is an authoritative survey of the major topics, current and emerging trends, and contemporary issues in the study of human social relationships and institutions.
- eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost)
This collection contains over 246,000 eBooks on a wide variety of academic subject matter.
- eBook Central (ProQuest)
eBook Central is a collection of nearly 250,000 academic e-books on a wide variety of subjects.
- Open Textbook Library
Textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are considered open because they are free to use and distribute, and are licensed to be freely adapted or changed with proper attribution. Currently offers more than 1280 open textbooks.
- Project Muse
An interdisciplinary collection of over 350 high quality, peer reviewed journals designed for institutions acquiring extensively in the humanities and social sciences. The collection includes over 6,000 eBooks.
- Springer Nature Link
This is an integrated collection of books, journals, and other materials from across the Springer Nature platform including Nature Portfolio, Springer, BMC, Palgrave, Discover, and Apress. Disciplines represented include the sciences, business, law, history, literature, philosophy, political science, social sciences, and statistics.
- Taylor & Francis eBooks
Taylor & Francis eBooks offers approximately 100,000 full-text resources including content published within the past year.
- Wiley Online Library
Wiley Online Library provides access to multidisciplinary content across more than 1,600 journals and 22,000 ebooks.
Demystifying Academic Writing by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781003131618Publication Date: 2021Informative, insightful, and accessible, this book is designed to enhance the capacity of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as early career scholars, to write for academic purposes. Fang describes key genres of academic writing, common rhetorical moves associated with each genre, essential skills needed to write the genres, and linguistic resources and strategies that are functional and effective for performing these moves and skills. Fang's functional linguistic approach to academic writing enables readers to do so much more than write grammatically well-formed sentences. It leverages writing as a process of designing meaning to position language choices as the central focus, illuminating how language is a creative resource for presenting information, developing argument, embedding perspectives, engaging audience, and structuring text across genres and disciplines. Covering reading responses, book reviews, literature reviews, argumentative essays, empirical research articles, grant proposals, and more, this text is an all-in-one resource for building a successful career in academic writing and scholarly publishing. Each chapter features crafts for effective communication, authentic writing examples, practical applications, and reflective questions. Fang complements these features with self-assessment tools for writers and tips for empowering writers. Assuming no technical knowledge, this text is ideal for both non-native and native English speakers, and suitable for courses in academic writing, rhetoric and composition, and language/literacy education.
Styling Your Writing by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781000578485Publication Date: 2022This text helps developing writers in the academy and beyond think through their writing process and develop strategies for styling their writing to meet the demands of a wide range of goals. The book imagines writing as an assortment of "outfits"-- bundles of styles and strategies through which one approaches a writing purpose, such as writing focused on experimentation and growth or writing focused on a professional task. By assessing the outfits writers feel most and least confident in, and examining how to be more at home in the outfits that matter to them, this book helps students develop both specific skills and their overall identity as writers. Readers are guided through before-, during-, and after-writing strategies and techniques, including: freewriting, outlining, visual planning, and composing in multimodal forms. Readers are also introduced to the importance of setting clear writing goals and sharing their work in a variety of ways, both in preparation for classroom success through peer review and writing center visits, and beyond the classroom in virtual and in-person spaces. This book serves as a core or supplemental text for writing courses at the undergraduate, graduate, or high school level, or as a writing guide for individual readers.
- Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost)
This scholarly, multi-disciplinary, full-text database includes more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals with coverage across nearly all areas of academic study. In addition to its 8,500 full-text periodicals, the database features more than 75,000 videos from the Associated Press from 1930 to the present.
- Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest)
A comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, offering millions of works from thousands of universities. Full-text coverage spans from 1743 to the present, with citation coverage dating back to 1637.
- JSTOR
A multidisciplinary digital library that includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR; spanning more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Access also includes more than two million primary source documents.
And, with the incorporation of Artstor's collections, JSTOR is now home to more than two million images.
- MasterFILE Premier (EBSCOhost)
This multidisciplinary database provides full-text for nearly 1,700 periodicals with full-text information dating as far back as 1975. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, MasterFILE Premier also contains full-text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 592,000 photos, maps & flags.
- ProQuest Platform (ProQuest)
Users can search, find and preview more than 900 million documents and retrieve scholarly full-text open access sources directly curated by ProQuest.
- Sage Journals
Sage Journals provides access to nearly 1,200 journals across a wide variety of subjects.
- SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCOhost)
This sociology research database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus. Contains full-text for more than 860 journals dating back to 1908. This database also includes full-text for more than 830 books and monographs, and full-text for over 16,800 conference papers.
- Taylor & Francis Online
This resource includes millions of peer-reviewed journal articles published under the Taylor & Francis, Routledge and Dove Medical Press imprints across many academic disciplines.
- Academic Video Online (AVON)
This multidisciplinary video database supports researchers in many different fields, from anthropology to zoology. The collection's wide range of academic material includes documentaries, interviews, feature films, performances, news programs and newsreels, and demonstrations.
- DocuseekDocuseek streams essential independent, social-issue and environmental films, providing access to content from leaders in documentary film distribution.
- Films on Demand: Archival Films & Newsreels Collection
Films Media Group (FMG) Archival Films & Newsreels has over 4,514 titles and over 578 hours of programming it is a treasure trove of archival and historical films from multiple sources.
- Films On Demand: Master Academic
This comprehensive collection includes 26 core academic collections with over 280,100+ video clips, 26,900+ full-length videos, and 14,500+ hours programming in various subject areas.
- Kanopy
Kanopy is a video streaming collection with over 26,000 films ranging from documentaries, indie, foreign, classic and blockbuster movies in several subjects and sub-subject areas. PBS, New Day Films, Kino Lorber, and California NewsReel are just a few of the content providers.
All students, faculty, and staff at NSU have access to FREE subscriptions to the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Sign up for an account to have access to current and archival coverage from some of the world's best news outlets. Please visit the following guide for details: Newspaper Digital Subscriptions for Students, Faculty, and Staff
In addition to the newspaper subscriptions above, the NSU research databases include access to historical newspapers, news aggregators, and business reporting platforms. Try out the following resources or visit the full A-Z database list for more: A-Z Databases
- America's News (NewsBank)
This collection provides access to more than 4,000 U.S. news sources, including current coverage and archives back to the 1980s. The platform draws from national, regional, and local news content, including access to more than 70 Virginia news sources, such as The Virginian-Pilot and Richmond Times-Dispatch.
- CQ Researcher
A full-text database of Congressional Quarterly Researcher, presenting overviews of current topics. Coverage includes overviews, chronologies, pro and con points of interest, and bibliographies of additional resources.
- Factiva
Factiva is a Dow Jones business intelligence platform that includes content from 33,000 news, data, and information sources from 200 countries and 32 languages. The archive has more than two billion articles. The oldest dates from 1944, and 2,300 sources have more than 20 years of archived articles.
- Gale In Context: Global Issues
Gale In Context: Global Issues supports global awareness and provides a global perspective while tying together authoritative content, empowering learners to critically analyze and understand the most important issues of the modern world. Explore issues within government, law, health, science and technology, society and culture, and more. Integrating news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics, and more, Global Issues is updated daily and offers 250 country pages and more than 400 issue pages. It contains more than 6,000 viewpoint commentaries provide background and guidance on significant topics like Food Security, Genocide, Human Rights, Extreme Weather, and more. Global Issues is cross-searchable with Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints.