Social Issues & Argumentative Essays: Finding Library Books

Use the library's catalog to search for a variety of materials relating to Social Issues.

Tips to keep in mind when searching:

1) Try Searching for your topic with the Words or Phrases search criteria for the best results.

2) If you are searching for a variety of "social issues" materials that are available in our library's collection, use one or more of the following topics in a Words or Phrases keyword topic search. Use Here are a few examples:

• "Climate Change"
• "Genetic Engineering"
• "Global Warming"
•  GMO
• "Human Trafficking"
•  Islamophobia
•  Privacy
• "Wage Gap"

3) As you explore our holdings, you'll discover more specific Subject Headings, such as: 

• Opinion
• Social Issues

These headings help narrow the focus of your search and can be helpful if you have a specific topic you're interested in exploring. If you want to know all of the Subject Headings for a particular item in our catalog, then click the Catalog Record tab in the item's record. You can click on one of the Subject Headings and it will bring up a list of all the other items in the library that have the same Subject Heading.

Important Note: Keep in mind that some of these subject searches will return mostly (if not all) eBooks and online resources. If you are only interested in book results, then select BOOK under the "Format" option on the Advanced Search page. This will get rid of all the eBook and online resource results and only provide you a list of books under the selected subject. 

You can also use the Series search pull down option to help you Locate a particular series of books for example: Opposing Viewpoints. Try combining the "Opposing Viewpoints" search by Series along with a Words or Phrases search by topic such as Food for books in the Opposing Viewpoints series relating to Food.

Current Controversies is another series of books focusing on controversial subjects. To view the collection of titles in this series use the Series search pull down menu to search Current Controversies.

The books in the Library are arranged alphabetically using the Library of Congress Classification System (LC). For more information about the Library of Congress System, please see the link listed below.

Guide to the Library of Congress Classification System