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Kirk Library Website and Resources Introduction (No Quiz)

Gathering Background Information

Once you have a general topic, it's important to get a broad overview of the subject. In this step, you begin to teach yourself about your topic through background research. Teaching yourself about your topic through background research has several benefits, including helping you:

  • identify the major concepts and issues related to your topic,
  • narrow your research to one aspect of your topic that you would like to investigate further,
  • and identify vocabulary associated with your topic that you can use to inform further research.

The library offers students access to several databases that are useful for background research, including: 

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The content of these guides, unless otherwise noted, by Kirk Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.