LibGuides: LIBA 101: Listening to Prisoners (Dr. Chalmers): Home

Background Sources

American Prisons and Jails : An Encyclopedia of Controversies and Trends by Vidisha Barua Worley, editor
Publication Date: 2019
Great for browsing for topics - look at the list on entry titles. Each entry also has references at the end that you can use to find more sources.
The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice by Jay S. Albanese (Editor-In-Chief)
Publication Date: 2014
Another encyclopedia with a wide range of topics for browsing. Extensive references at the end of each entry.

Credo Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Online reference library providing access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, science, and technology.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Contains the texts of more than 250 reference titles published by Oxford University Press from all subject areas.

News Sources

Access World News This link opens in a new window
This database has lots of local newspapers, typically with coverage from the 1990s to today. Use the map search to drill down to the state you're looking for.
US Major Dailies This link opens in a new window
The major national papers: The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Wofford OneSearch

Wofford OneSearch is a single search platform that contains books, ebooks, journal articles, magazines, newspapers, audio, video, and reference materials. It is a great place to explore your topic and find scholarly resources, but it can sometimes be overwhelming due to the amount of information a normal search will pull up. Think of it like shopping on Amazon: you should tell OneSearch exactly what you're looking for using keywords and choosing the right limiters in the left column of your search results.

For example, a search for "wrongful conviction" retrieves nearly 3,000 results. You can narrow your search by adding additional keywords or using the limiters in the left column.

Choosing only scholarly and peer reviewed articles reduces the number of articles to about 1,200.

Finally, we can add additional keywords to make our search more specific. Adding the keyword race to our search brings up scholarly articles about wrongful convictions and race. Play around with your keywords and limiters until you find articles or books that will work for your project.

When you find resources that you'd like to save, click on the pushpin icon next to the item. Log in using your MyWofford credentials to save the items to your OneSearch account.