GALILEO AND RESEARCH TIPS

Literary Analysis

WHAT IS GALILEO?

Galileo is a doorway to a wealth of information. You can access over 150 databases of periodicals and scholarly journals.

Over 7000 journal titles are provided in full-text.

Other resources include an encyclopedia, business directories, a collection, 10,000 full-text books and government publications.

This is overwhelming at first, so here are a few tips to help you along the way.

HOW TO GET TO GALILEO

Go to the HCHS Webpage

Click on “Media Center” on the right panel

Expand the “Research” linkClick on “Web Resources”

Click on Galileo*

This should take you to the homepage. However, if you do it from home, the Galileo password for HCHS is: rapids.

SEARCHING

Limit your questions to keywords!

For example, you would not ask “Does Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird have themes of discrimination against African Americans?”

What else could you ask?

SEARCHING

Once you have searched what is necessary, focus on the left panel—here is what you need to focus on: First of all, we are only looking for Full Text publications You also want to be sure that your source is credible; therefore, you will click on Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals

You can also refine your search by the publication date. My suggestion is to stay relatively current, but do not refine your search too much. (2000 – 2015; not 2014 – 2015)

Once you have done all this, your search results will go down in number significantly, but that is how you know that you are getting the best of the best.

FURTHER RESEARCH

Once the searches are refined, start to look around for promising articles.

Read the abstract to determine whether or not an article is even worth reading.

What is an abstract?

Good news! At the bottom of the article abstract, Galileo already gives you the MLA works cited citation! All you have to do is format it in your essay’s Works Cited page.

RESEARCHING TIPS

To check the credibility of sources, use easywhois.com. This shows the domain of many websites available online.

DO NOT use Wikipedia, answers.com, Yahoo! Answers, results found on generic Google searches, as credible resources.

Why?

Distinguish between direct quoting, summarizing, and paraphrasing:

Keep source cards/a notebook with the good sources you find.

No matter what, you MUST give credit to sources.

TEXTS/REGIONS TO CHOOSE FROM Caribbean Norse South African African Italian Russian Irish Middle Eastern

Columbian Brazilian Nicaraguan Chinese Japanese Indian Egyptian American (Influenced by the World)