When looking for sources for a research question or other assignment, start by asking:
- What type of person or organization might have created this source, and when?
- Where might this source have been published or archived, either in print or online?
If you know very little about the topic, read a tertiary source (an encyclopedia entry) to help point you to more valuable secondary and primary sources for further reading. Wikipedia, the user-contributed resource, can help you to get started, as long as you dig further into its citations, search for others, and base your claims on the richest sources.
For a broad scope of secondary and primary sources, try an “advanced search” in:
- Trincoll.WorldCat.org – best worldwide library catalog; Trinity results listed first
- Google Scholar – citations for scholarly articles or legal documents, but not full-text
For a narrower scope, try an “advanced search” in specialized databases:
- America: History and Life – scholarly articles, books & book reviews on U.S. history*
- Connecticut General Assembly, Office of Legislative Research – for state bills & laws
- Connecticut State Dept of Ed (CSDE) and CT Education Data and Research (CEDaR)
- Education Full Text – current scholarly & professional journal articles on education*
- Education Index Retrospective – scholarly & professional ed journals, 1929-1983*
- EducationWeek.org – newsweekly on preK-12 since 1981 (requires password)
- ERIC (Ebsco) – educational reports, articles, papers, chapters*
- Internet Archive – public digital library, with WayBackMachine for past websites
- JSTOR – full-text archive scholarly journals (and more) across several fields*
- Lexis Nexis Academic – full-text search of national news, legal, business sources*
- PsycArticles and PsychINFO – scholarly articles in psychology, including education*
- Social Sciences Full Text – scholarly articles in anthro, econ, and other soc sciences*
- Sociological Abstracts – scholarly articles in sociology and related fields*
- Trinity College Digital Repository, Ed Studies senior research projects and more
- US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
*Requires Trinity network access or off-campus VPN access
To search the Hartford Courant newspaper:
- 1764-1987, Hartford Courant Historical (full-text online)*
- 1987-1991, Hartford Courant (microfilm only, no index), Trinity Library level A
- 1992 to the past month or so, Hartford Courant (full-text online)*
- Very recent issues, Courant.com (full-text online, free)
To search more news: ProQuest News (NYTimes Historical, WashPost, WSJ) or LexisNexis Academic (broader scope of national & world news, 1980-present)*
To find journals by title (digital or print), go to Trinity Library > Articles
See other digital resources organized by Trinity Library > Digital Collections
Meet with a Trinity Research Librarian for more advice
