Skip to Main Content

ENG 111: College Composition I (Pierce-Loudoun)

American Dream Research Paper. Direct comments to Barbie Keiser, bkeiser@nvcc.edu.

Need Help?

Phone or E-mail
FAQ
Video Tutorials

For individual research help, schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian.

Websites

Search Google for your topic keywords. Look for government, education, and/or organization webpages as well as news/magazine publications. If researching controversial topics, be aware of biased publications. Google Tip! Limit to a domain by including site:.gov, .edu, or .org in the search box.

Google Web Search

Before using information found on a webpage, consider the following criteria to evaluate its credibility.

  • Who is the author?
  • What are his/her qualifications?
  • Why was the website created?
  • When was it last updated?
  • How reliable is the information?

Scholarly resources may not be apparent if you simply "Google." You can increase the likelihood that an authoritative resource appears at the top of your results by limiting your search by filetype (filetype:pdf) or domain (site:.gov or site:.edu or site:.org). Alternatively, you can begin your search at Google Scholar. 

Internet Archive Scholar is a good alternative to Google Scholar. For scientific literature, there is Semantic Scholar. 

You might experiment using an artificial intelligence (AI) research assistant, such as Elicit, ResearchRabbit, or Perplexity. You'll have to "sign up," but they are free.