ENGL 2123 Comics & Graphic Novels: Home

Welcome to the English 2123 Research Guide! This guide will help you find sources and contains tips and tricks for you to do successful research. This is a starting place and many of you will find everything you need in this guide. However, if it isn’t helping you, feel free to venture into other library databases.

The “Home” tab explains what the guide is and why we should use the library resources.

The “Background Resources” tab is exactly what it sounds like, the tab to help find some background resources.  Similar to how you cannot build a house without a good foundation of knowledge, you cannot do in-depth research without getting some background information. These sources will help you develop those Keywords that will help you search.

“Scholarly Resources” will be the place you can go to find sources for your paper. These are not all of the sources but just a few. This can be a great place to begin your actual research. These databases will contain many sources, including those peer-reviewed sources that you need for your paper. Please keep in mind that not all of our databases are full-text so you might need to use the interlibrary loan system to get what you need. I will also provide some books that you might find useful in our research. These are not “peer-reviewed” but they are scholarly.

“I Need Help” is the tab you go to when you start panicking. Don’t worry, stressing over your research is a completely normal part of the process. Finding sources and even citations can be overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be. If you give yourself enough time to properly research and don’t wait until the last minute, you will be okay! 

Information Online:

Is not always evaluated for accuracy. Anyone can make a website and as long as it looks good and has minimal mistakes, many people will believe it.  

Information online may be incorrect, misleading, or biased. Everything has a bias, however, with academic sources, there's a level of transparency that many online sources just do not have. 

Accessing scholarly content may require payment. At the libraries, everything we have, you can get access to for free. You have already paid for the databases and journals with your student fees. Please don't pay for something that we can get to you! 

Library Books and Databases:

Our books and databases have been evaluated for quality and accuracy. We don't just buy the most popular book or database. We review them and make sure they meet our standards. 

The libraries have information you cannot find or access via Google or Google Scholar. We have over 350 databases and subscriptions to millions of journals.

Unlike Google and Google Scholar, we give you tools to narrow or expand your search. We allow you to filter our your results based on filters like date, full-text, and peer-reviewed. 

Google can't do that. 

Been a while since you have researched? We have some awesome tutorials to help clear away the cobwebs. 

Other useful and informative tutorials can be found in our Tutorials' Page.