You may feel comfortable navigating library resources for your own research and writing – including the 100+ databases subscribed to by the Mina Rees Library. But what about when you are creating research assignments for your own undergraduate students? Are you at a loss about what databases to suggest because you don’t know what they have access to through their CUNY library? Are you worried that the databases you use may contain material that is too dense for undergraduate college students? Below are six full text databases to which all CUNY libraries subscribe – no matter the subject area you teach you are sure to find one that fits the needs of your class. Thanks to Mina Rees Reference Librarian Michael Adams for supplying much of the database description text.
Academic Search Complete: This interdisciplinary article database is a one-stop shop for undergraduate and graduate students alike. It includes full text of over 9,000 journals, including 7,900 peer-reviewed journals, with indexing for another 4,000 titles. Also includes the text of books, conference papers, conference proceedings, and educational reports. Students can easily limit their search to peer reviewed articles by doing an Advanced Search and selecting the ‘Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals’ option.
CQ Researcher: A good resource for pro/con argument writing assignments, CQ Researcher contains reports from 1991 to the present on education, the environment, health, international affairs, technology, the U.S. economy, and other political and social issues. Each 12,000-word report includes bibliographies, maps, tables, and pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions.
EBSCO eBook Collection: Over 2,800 e-books are contained in this database. While the books are also included in the CUNY library catalog, so can be searched by title, author, or subject heading, a search in this database also allows searching of the full text of the books. E-books can be read online or downloaded as a pdf (disappears after 1-7 days).
(Gale) Virtual Reference Library: This interdisciplinary e-book database provides students with authoritative but not overly complicated essays from reference books and encyclopedias. Highly recommended.
New York State Newspapers: Daily updates for most titles, full text ranges from the 1980s for some titles and 2000-present for others.
Opposing Viewpoints: Similar to CQ Researcher, this database provides social-issues information from newspaper and magazine articles, reference sources, government and organizational statistics, primary documents, and over 1,800 annotated Web sites.
Visit this page for a full list of CUNY wide database organized by broad subject area. If you would like to learn more about research resources for undergraduate students, contact any Mina Rees Librarian.
