Finding Books

Reference sources are a good place to start your research. You will find reference sources in the print reference collection, e-books and electronic databases.

Suggested reference books include:
  • Foreign Language Dictionaries: Greek, Latin, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Cuban, Portuguese
    • REF PA - PC
  • Foreign Language Dictionaries: German, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Arabic, Gujarati, Chinese, Kurdish, Turkish, Japanese, Hawaiian, Maori
    • REF PF - PL
  • English & American Dictionaries and Thesauri
    • REF PE
  • Visual Dictionaries
    • REF PE1629
  • Oxford ESL Dictionary
    • REF PE2835.O95
  • TOEFL Practice Guides
    • REF PE1128
Suggested reference databases include:

Available off-campus from the Off Campus Access Menu.

A catalog search is the best way to find books owned by the library.

Reading improvement books in the MCC Library:

  • Challenger Adult Reading Series (reading lessons)
    • LC5225
  • Jamestown Education Series (series of stories at increasing levels of reading difficulty)
    • PE1126
  • Pre-GED Study Guides
    • LB3060.33
  • Various books and media on learning English
    • PE1128

Finding Articles

Much college-level research will be done using periodicals/journal articles. Journal articles can be found through our subscription databases.

Suggested article databases include:

Available off-campus from the Off Campus Access Menu.

Search Tips

AND

Narrows it down!

tattoos AND artists
Finds items containing BOTH terms.

OR

Brings more!

college OR university
Finds items that contain ANY one of the terms
"QUOTATIONS"
"Mchenry County College"
Finds items that contain the EXACT phrase.

Online tools for the research process:

Brainstorming Made Simple

KwMap: A Keyword Map for the Whole Internet

Visuwords: Online Graphical Dictionary

Finding Websites

Remember to carefully evaluate information found on the Internet. Unlike most traditional print sources, Internet sources may not go through any review process before the information is made available to the public.

Recommended websites

Search Engines