Current Students

Reference is the first phase of research. Begin with general encyclopedias like Britannica or Encyclopedia.com to get acquainted with your topic. Then move on to specialized reference collections from Credo and Oxford. Pay attention to keywords, important names, and bibliographies. 

Finding newspaper, magazine, and journal articles is the second phase of research. Begin with Database Finder and enter your major or course heading.   You will be given a list of recommended databases to search. If you need to search within a particular periodical, look for it in the Journal Finder. For even more databases, check out Hennepin County Library collection and the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM). When searching databases, begin by keyword search or look up articles listed in bibliographies from your reference sources. When you hit upon relevant results, note the subject headings assigned to them. Search by these subject headings in Advanced Search for the most relevant results.

Finding book length treatments of your topic - aka "books" or "monographs" - is the third phase of research. Search MnPALS Plus or MnPALS Classic by the subject headings or keywords you discovered for your topic - this will reveal what books and other materials we have in our collection at HTC. Note that many book titles in our collection are ebooks, which you can read immediately by clicking the URL in the catalog record or by clicking the eBrary link. Consult MnLINK, WorldCat, and BooksInPrint for books we do not have in our collection and feel free to order them by Inter-Library Loan.  They will be delivered to our library for your use.

We are fortunate to have a world class digital streaming video collection called Films On Demand. There are thousands of videos on all program areas within career and technical education and general education as well. Note that segments are brief clips, while titles are longer form videos. Credo has an excellent image collection, and we can use any of these images for educational purposes without copyright concerns. Britannica includes videos, animations, and images. Minnesota Reflections has historical images of the state.

Here you will find links to helpful tools and utilities for navigating the world of information and our libraries.