WR121 Fisher: Making history matter

• Enter a search in the PCC Library search box. 
• If the book you want has a linked message starting with Available at..., and the book is available on your home campus, write down the location and call number.

• If the book is available from another campus, click on the "Request" button in the "Get It" section, (NOTE: You will need to login with your MyPCC username and password after clicking the blue "Sign in" button to see the "Request" button), and specify the campus to which you'd like the book to be sent.

• If the book is not available from PCC, you can order it using the "Get it" buttons to request a physical copy or digital chapters from the book (located in the "Get it from other locations" section). Learn more about requesting library materials.

One of the best features of Google's Advanced Search is the ability to limit your search to the areas of the web where the information may be more reliable, such as education sites or government sites. The shortcut for this is to add site:edu or site:gov to your regular Google search. Plenty of .com and .org resources are reliable, like news organizations and think-tanks that produce research and data. Using site:edu or site:gov is particularly useful when your Google search results in a lot of links to websites that are trying to sell you something or that seem of low quality.

For example, if you conduct an ordinary Google search for nutritional supplements, most of your top results will be commercial (.com) sites trying to sell you vitamins.  If you search for nutritional supplements site:gov , the top results (except for the sponsored ads) will be sites such as the National Institute of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, which are not trying to sell you a product.*  If you search for nutritional supplements site:edu, your top results will be from universities providing research on nutritional supplements. 

*Some government websites have experienced the removal of content by the Trump administration, including information about climate, environment, gender, diversity, gun violence and healthcare.  Researchers are always advised to verify information by checking multiple sources. Contact a librarian for assistance evaluating content found on government or other websites and locating archived data. 

Books are essential to researchers and often provide a strong overview of a topic. One way to find books on your topic is to use a keyword search to find relevant subjects.

For example, I searched the keyword phrase college study skills in the PCC Library search box. The first result seemed very relevant, a book called College study skills : becoming a strategic learner. I clicked on the linked title of the book, then scrolled to the Item Details heading to view the Subjects you see below. Clicking on a linked subject will get me quickly to more books on the same topic.

Focus on Oregon History, on the Oregon Historical Society website, links to primary documents on a variety of topics including African American History in Oregon, Asian Pacific American History in Oregon, Lewis and Clark in Oregon, Reservation Life in Oregon, Wartime Portland, and Women's History in Oregon.