The goal of your paper is to show your audience an important truth you have learned as a result of reading your book--about a certain social group, an issue pertaining to social justice, or even an issue adjacent to the book which you believe it highlighted. You will integrate your understanding of the book and its themes with thoughtful research on its themes to create a persuasive, sophisticated argument.
From school, clicking on any of the database links will get you directly in to any database.
From home, you need login credentials because these are subscription (that is, paid-for) databases. Click on the image below to access the Google Doc containing the passwords. You must be signed in with a Northern Highlands account to view these passwords.
Having trouble? Email the librarian at goldbergj@northernhighlands.org, or stop by the Library.
Unlike those of a free website, database URLs are dynamic. That means that they change, so if you copy and paste a URL from a database into a Google Doc, the link will not work.
Permanent links are found in different places in different families of databases. The table below will show you where to find permanent links to the database pages you want to visit again.
| Company | Look for | Screenshot |
|---|---|---|
| Gale |
Get link |
 |
| EBSCO |
Permalink |
 |
| Infobase |
Record URL Scroll to the bottom of the page
|
|
| JSTOR |
Link on the left, below the image of the journal. |
 |
| Proquest | In the top right corner, click All Options. You will see the link on the top of the page. |
|
By Ms. J. Goldberg, 3/17/23
When researching a controversial issue in order to form your own independent opinion, it's important to begin your research in sources that are as unbiased as possible. Why? Because of anchoring bias, our deeply-ingrained human tendency to remember and believe the first piece of information we learn about a topic.
I always think of this in evolutionary terms. Imagine an ancient ancestor of y
ours as a child out walking with their mother. The mother points out a plant and says, "See that plant? The pretty pink flowers? Do NOT eat that plant! It's poison!" If the child remembers the warning and heeds it, the child survive grows up, has children, and becomes your ancestor. If not? That kid does not live long enough to become anybody's ancestor! We are descended from people who survived by believing and remembering the first thing they heard. This tendency does not serve us well in the Information Age. (This is just a story to help us think about anchoring bias. You can get into the real science of cognitive biases, if you want to.)
Beginning research on a controversial issue on Google leads our cognitively biased brains into an easy trap. Some search results begin with advertisements (i.e. "sponsored" results). Others begin with a selection of items from news sources, some of which may be editorial in nature. When there are no ads or news items, the order in which you see results is based on Google's PageRank algorithm, which is a long story, but it means that the order of the results varies (sometimes even throughout the day), and that they are not li
sted in order of accuracy or quality, but use other algorithmic factors to determine which results you see first, second, third, or hundredth at any given time.
Those top results for a controversial issue are likely to be from an organization that supports a particular perspective or policy on the issue you're trying to learn about. A private organization is under no obligation to
explain the pros and cons of the issue, or to use neutral language to describe their opponents' views. They are free to be as biased as they want to be, and that's great! That's freedom of expression! But it's not helpful to students trying to learn about an issue and form their own independent opinions.
What Should You Do Instead?
Begin your research in the Northern Highlands Library databases. Start with Opposing Viewpoints in Context. If you find a Portal Page for your issue, begin by reading the Overview Essay at the top, making sure to click to see the whole article. This Overview Essay will introduce you to the history, important figures, vocabulary, and relevant laws about the topic. It will also introduce you to a range of opinions about the topic, describing them as fairly as possible. 
Just for now, you should skip the boxes immediately below, the ones labeled "Featured Viewpoints" and "Viewpoints." Look instead at Reference, Infographics, Statistics and/or Primary Sources. After reading a few, stop and think about the opinions you have begun to develop.Once you have a clear idea about what you think, start to explore the Viewpoints, Magazine Articles, Newspaper Articles, Audio, Video, and Images categories. Make sure that you read Viewpoints you expect to agree with and those you expect to disagree with. If you change your mind, that's fine! A strong persuasive essay might very well make you consider the issue in a new light.
If your topic is global, follow the same procedure in Global Issues in Context, which is organized in a similar way.
Now You're Ready for the Internet!
Armed with facts, history, vocabulary, and a sense of the range of opinions people have about this issue, you are now equipped to evaluate critically the additional information available online without falling into agreement with the first source you encounter. You gave yourself the space to make up your own mind first, instead of leaving your anchor-biased brain at the mercy of whatever happened to come up first on Google today.
1. Log in to your NoodleTools account. (Forgot your login info? Contact the librarian.)
2. Create or open a project.
3. Follow the instructions for exporting a citation from each kind of database. Find the article you want, and then:
| Gale | Click Cite  at the top right of the page, then select "Export to NoodleTools." |
| EBSCO | Click on the right-hand menu, then click  . Select the last item in the list, which is  . |
| JSTOR | Click  in the left-hand menu. Scroll down past the three citations and select  , the first item on the list. |
|
INFOBASE |
Click  directly under the article title. Then click  . |
| PROQUEST | Click  in the upper right menu. Scroll down past the citation. You do NOT need to change the citation format at the top! Select  , then Continue on the next screen. |
4. Refresh your Sources page, and there you will see a perfectly-formatted MLA citation.
5. To print or export all your sources into a pre-formatted Works Cited page, select the printer icon at the top of your Sources page, then choose what program you want your citations exported to.
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