Pro & Con: Finding Materials to Support a Position: Step 1: Sources to Give You The Basics

All of these resources are found on the database pages. If you are accessing databases from outside the Chemeketa campus, you will need your My Chemeketa user name and password. All of these databases include statistics and graphics as well as arguments for and against each topic.

CQ Researcher

CQ Researcher. This is a weekly magazine, each issue of which covers one newsworthy topic. The library has online access. Sections of the online magazine called "Overview" and "Pro-Con", ask and give views on several questions. For example, in the issue called "Gun Violence," the questions are about possible measures society might take to reduce gun violence:

• "Should schools adopt additional security measures to try to prevent mass shootings?"
• "Should it be harder for someone with a history of mental illness to obtain a gun?"
• "Should laws limiting the carrying of concealed weapons be relaxed?"
• "Should guns be allowed on college campuses?"

Tip: Help with writing an MLA or APA style citation for a CQ Researcher article is available by clicking the CiteNow! link near the top of the page above the article.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context is a Gale database that provides background information and viewpoint articles on controversial issues. The database includes viewpoint articles, along with topic overviews, court case overviews, and organization profiles.

The "Expert Picks," "Viewpoints" and "Reference" lists on the search results page have chapters from Opposing Viewpoints, Current Controversies, and other series of books that have controversial content and are published by Gale.

SIRS Issues Researcher is a ProQuest database that includes articles, primary sources, websites, and multimedia covering a variety of viewpoints and current controversial topics. It is searchable by keyword or contents can be browsed by subject area. 

Two series of books, called Opposing Viewpoints and Current Controversies, deal with controversial subjects.

• Each chapter of a book in one of these series deals with a separate subtopic of the overall subject, and every "pro" chapter has a corresponding "con" chapter.
• Type a word dealing with your subject and a word from the series title. For example, "animal rights controversies" in the Keyword search would find the book The Rights Of Animals in the Currrent Controversies series.
• The title key word search finds words within the chapter headings as well as in the book title.
• Or, find these books on the Primo Library Search Browse page. Change Browse by Subject to Browse By Title  and type in "Opposing Viewpoints" or "Current Controversies."Then click on the title in the resulting list.

Tip: Chapters from these and other viewpoint books are available online in the Opposing Viewpoints in Context database. Book chapters are identified as Viewpoints.

Another series that deals with controversial subjects is called The Reference Shelf. "Shelf AND families" would find Families: Traditional And New Structures, one of the books in the series.

The What Everyone Needs to Know series can help you explore topics, find helpful search terms and narrow down a broad topic.  Click on the links below to see books in this series.

Gale General OneFile provides coverage of congressional testimony (Congressional Hearing Transcript Database and Political/Congressional Transcript Wire), as well as other documents. By using the Advanced Search feature that lets the user limit results to a single magazine, you can find congressional testimony. In the example below, we have searched for the keywords "Internet and privacy" on the first line and "congressional transcript" on the second line. Next to "congressional transcript" we've change the menu from Keyword to Publication Title to find both Political/Congressional Transcript Wire and Congressional Hearing Transcript Database.