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Utah's Online Library Database Catalog

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Ancient CivilizationsPerforming Research
Your search terms matter. Keep search terms short for academic databases and search engines. You can search for information in different ways. For instance, if you wanted to research a certain Italian civilization you could search by place (Ancient Rome), people (Romans), or name of their civilization (Roman Empire). Different search terms can yield different results, and you may have to search in all three different ways to find information.   

For general searches, type in the place, name of the people, or name of the civilization, and hit search. For more specific searches, use a key word with your terms. For example, if you wanted information on different cities in the Persian Empire, you could search "cities of the Persian Empire" or "cities in Ancient Persia." 

Pressing the CTRL+F keys opens up a search box on pages, so you can search for specific words and letters grouped together. If you want to have the computer scan a web page for a specific word (instead of reading the whole thing), type the word in the box and search. The computer will highlight the word and tell you how many times it shows up on a page. For instance, if you wanted to find a city in the Persian Empire, you could hit CTRL+F, type in "capital" or "city," and press search. It's a huge time saver.

UTAH'S ONLINE LIBRARY (http://onlinelibrary.uen.org)
When searching from home, you'll have to log in with a provided username and password.

World Book Encyclopedia
World Book provides a lot of concise information about a variety of topics, and many of the articles also contain pictures. Choose the student product (with the pencil icon), and start searching! You can find a lot of information by putting the word Ancient in front of the geography listed on your travel blog assignment page (Ancient Persia, etc.). This works for many, but not all civilizations. For instance, in places with several civilizations (such as India), you would want to search for information about your specfic civilization. 

Only use information that is reliable. World Book hires experts to write their articles and usually lists the author's credentials at the bottom of the articles. Two important features in the Settings section (found by clicking the settings symbol in the upper right corner of the article) are the Save feature and the Citation feature. If you click the Save feature, you can save the article as a .pdf file (and upload to Onedrive). If you click the Citation feature, you can copy and paste the source citation directly into your notes or assignment. 

Gale Reference Collection: High School
The Gale database labelled Gale in Context: High School has a lot of great articles about different civilizations. You can do a standard search in the search box for your civilization. If you click on the "Browse Topics" feature, you can see a warehouse of information on different topics listed in alphabetical order. For example, if you scroll down to Ancient, you can see information on Ancient China, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, and others. If you hit CTRL+F and type in your civilization, you can quickly check to see if it's listed (Persian, for example). These warehouses list all of the scholarly and popular articles the site has on a topic as well as other media, such as images and videos. 

You can highlight and annotate articles right there on the screen. If you click on the Send To function in the upper right hand corner, you can send the file directly to Microsoft Onedrive. It'll show up in a folder called "Gale in Context: High School." Also, if you click the "Cite" button, it will allow you to copy and paste an MLA citation. Sometimes author credentials are listed at the beginnings or ends of the articles. You can also use the title of the magazine to discuss how reliable the information is (as long as it comes from a trustworthy source). The Gale database curators collect articles from a variety of reliable sources that have already been professionally edited and fact checked for accuracy.   

SWEETSEARCH
Sweetsearch.com is an excellent academic database that connects students with great information. One thing to be aware of is that the site often lists ads above their search returns. They are clearly labelled with an AD box underneath the link. So all you have to do is scroll down until you find search returns, and you'll find a lot of great info!

MLA CITATIONS
Citationmachine.net is a great resource to help you start formatting your MLA citations (unless you used Gale or World Book, which does the citations for you). You can copy and paste the web address into the site, and the site will do its best to create a correct citation for you. Oftentimes there are errors, particularly with the dates, so you may have to do some reformatting. 

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) 
Purdue's OWL is the place to visit for all things MLA. I don't have MLA format memorized, so I always go here to double check my citations. Just line your citations up with the example citations to see if yours is correct. 

MLA Format requires website citations be placed in a hanging indent (like the reverse of a paragraph) and provide the following information and be punctuated accordingly:

Author's last name, first name (if provided). "Title of Article in Quotation Marks." Name of Website in Italics,

        the date it was published online (if listed), the URL (web address).  

Roman Empire Autopsy Research

First, look for big articles that contain a lot of information about your topic. If you don't find what you're looking for when searching "Roman Empire," try "Ancient Rome" or "Romans." Once you've found a lot of information about your autopsy, start narrowing your searches to what you weren't able to find, such as searching for "Roman Art" or "Roman Leaders."

Utah's Online Library provides students in Utah with great resources that can help you complete your project: 

• World Book Online has an excellent article written by an expert on Ancient Rome. Choose the Student Edition and see what you can find. 
• Gale Reference Collection-High School is an article database that provides access to a ton of articles on the Roman Empire. Choose the Gale in Context database. From there, you can type in "Roman Empire" or go to Browse Topics and find Roman Empire on their alphabetical list. 

You don't have to read an entire article anymore. If you use CTRL+F, you can search an article for specific words. Then you only have to read the paragraphs that contain the key words and find information much quicker than if you read the article in its entirety. 

ABDO provides you with access to a great book titled Ancient Rome. See Mr. Sayers or your teacher for login info. There is a search feature you can use to type in specific aspects you're researching, such as religion or art or politics. 

Sweetsearch.com is an academic search engine that can also provide you with access to great websites about the Roman Empire. They usually post ads (that are clearly labelled with the word AD in green under the link), so you might have to scroll down to find the information you're trying to find. 

Echinoderms, Mollusks, and Worms

Here are some great resources to use if you want to learn about echinoderms, mollusks, and worms:

Utah's Online Library has three great places to visit. See your teacher for login information when working from home.  

Digital Science Online has videos of these three groups under the subject "Life" and the category "Classifying Animals."

World Book Encyclopedia (select the Student Edition) has concise information about them. 

Gale Reference Collection has a section called Gale in Context--Science that allows you to search for these categories. 

Sweetsearch.com is an educational search engine that filters out nonacademic content. Scroll below the ads to see their recommendations.