Did you know that the library provides access to online encyclopedias? Wikipedia isn’t the only encyclopedia on the internet these days; check out Encyclopedia Britannica (http://cityte.ch/brit) as a great starting place for your research. (Remember: if you’re off campus, you’ll be asked to use your CUNYfirst login when clicking on the links in this blog post.)
In addition to giving topic overviews, Britannica is also a terrific source for biographies. Not sure why your professor keeps mentioning Freud’s work in your class? Read a quick biography to figure out what Freud’s deal was. Desperate to find a fashion designer to write a paper about? Browse biographies by profession (click under “known for”); you can even limit by nationality, time period, and gender, and then scan the results for some ideas.
A biography in Britannica doesn’t give you all the info (we’d love to add a few more paragraphs to Aaliyah’s, but it’s a great starting point for context and keyword that you can use for further research.
(BRB, we’re reading all about Hypatia now.)
