Magazine Subscriptions

Flipster (Google SSO)

Our account provides access to full current and archived issues of The Atlantic magazine. Contact Liz Ebersole with new subscription requests.

Newspaper Subscriptions

The Bush School Library pays for students, faculty, and staff of The Bush School to have an individual subscription to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Follow the instructions below to activate your account(s).

New York Times Online Group Pass

Follow this link for instructions to activate your account.

Washington Post Online Group Pass

Follow this link for instructions to activate your account. Please be sure to follow the instructions fully and closely so that your account is activated!

News Databases

We also maintain subscriptions to the following news databases:

NewsBank Access World News (UN: bushschool; PW: library)

This comprehensive news collection is ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national and international level. Its diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Pro Tip: Use the shortcut links to access specific news streams, including America's News Magazines, Seattle Times Collection (with historical archives), USA (national news), USA - Washington news, World news.

Newsela (teachers need to create class and invite students)

Offers a variety of non-fiction readings, with an emphasis on news and journalistic stories across many subjects

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: US Major Dailies (1849-2021) (Google SSO)

Includes the following newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post

World Politics Review (Google SSO)

In-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs to help identify and make sense of the events and trends shaping our world. Read more about their approach here: WPR: About.

FREE Reliable News Websites

The following are top-ranked news sites that publish trustworthy, credible, reliable content, not fake news stories or disinformation.

Allsides

Allsides.com exposes people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world — and each other. The AllSides Media Bias Chart™ helps you to easily identify different perspectives and political leanings in online news content so you can get the full picture and think for yourself.

AP (Associated Press)

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting.

BBC News

BBC News is a British free-to-air television news channel run by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

NPR (National Public Radio)

Independent, nonprofit media organization that was founded on a mission to create a more informed public.

ProPublica

Covers a range of topics including government and politics, business, criminal justice, the environment, education, health care, immigration, and technology. ProPublica was the first online news organization to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Reuters

Global source of news coverage since 1851. Offers a variety of content types such as breaking news, comprehensive reports, multimedia, and authenticated content, in 12 languages.

Seattle Public Library A-Z Online Resources (use your personal SPL account to access)

SPL has many resources for accessing the news, including those listed below. You will need to log in with your personal SPL account.

• Flipster Online Magazine Collection (includes news magazines)

• Online Magazines, Newspapers, and Journals (in the SPL collection)

• PressReader - More than 7,000 magazines and newspapers in more than 60 languages are available in full-page, full-color formats, just as they appear in print.

NOTE: News organizations have been included in the above list based on a cross comparison of a number of analyses of media bias and accuracy including (but not limited to) allsides.com, adfontesmedia.com, and mediabiasfactcheck.com.

BrainPOP (Google SSO)

Interactive learning site with content that includes movies, quizzes, games, mobile apps, activity pages. Specific topics are linked in the appropriate subject. For Teachers: There is a separate teacher interface available with lesson plans and additional resources.

EBSCO (Google SSO)

Our EBSCO homepage, where you will find tiles for all of our EBSCO products, organized by subject. Use the links below for specific databases:

• EBSCOhost 

Search any or all of our 37 EBSCO databases. Scholarly research (journal articles & books).

• Explora for High School

Engaging user interface that promotes topic exploration while also supporting scholarly research. Note: Search does not include Academic Search Premier.

• World Politics Review 

In-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs to help identify and make sense of the events and trends shaping our world. Read more about their approach here: WPR: About.

• Flipster 

Magazines. Our account provides access to full current and archived issues of the print edition of The Atlantic magazine.

Encyclopedia Britannica (UN: bushschool; PW: library)

A general encyclopedia covering all topics.

Gale Databases (Google SSO)

Our Gale homepage, where you will find links to all of our Gale databases. Use the links below for specific databases:

• Gale Academic One File (Google SSO)

Access general interest magazines and key serials in a single resource.

Infobase (Google SSO)

• Classroom Video On Demand: Master Collection

Comprehensive video library for all subject areas with standards-aligned videos, educator guides, assessment tools, and accessibility features.

• History Research Center

  • African-American History

  • American Indian History

  • American History

  • Ancient and Medieval History

  • Modern World History

  • World Religions

• Issues & Controversies in History

Explores contemporary issues with unbiased, factual information. Each pro/con debate topic includes explanatory introductions and primary source excerpts that teach how to analyze document-based questions, reach independent conclusions, and write analytically. Pro Tip: Use the menus in the right column to narrow down by American History Era, History Region (Americas/United States), or History Subject.

JSTOR (Google SSO)

Provides full-text articles from academic journals, books, and primary sources. Pro Tip: After logging in to our Bush School account, you can also use Google SSO to login to a personal account so that you can make use of the Work Space tools, including saving articles and organizing saved articles into folders.

• JSTOR Primary Sources (Google SSO)

Find primary sources, including monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, 3D models, spatial data, type specimens, drawings, paintings, and more.

ProQuest (Google SSO)

Provides full-text articles from academic journals, books, and primary sources.

• ProQuest Black Studies

This database combines primary and secondary sources, including leading historical Black newspapers, archival documents and collections, key government materials, videos, writings by major Black intellectuals and leaders, scholarly journals, and essays by top scholars in Black Studies. Pro Tip: Be sure to explore the timelines, topic pages, and collection pages options.

• ProQuest Historical Newspapers: US Major Dailies (1849-2021)

Includes the following newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post

The following online databases are free to access and have been curated by Bush School Librarians and teachers. Teachers: Please let us know about any databases you use with students that you would like to see added to the list.

Artstor

This link directs you to the public access collections from Artstor Digital Library, a resource that provides straightforward access to curated images from reliable sources that have been rights-cleared for use in education and research — you are free to use them in classroom instruction and handouts, presentations, student assignments, and other noncommercial educational and scholarly activities.

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

Arranged chronologically from earliest explorations to contemporary time.

American Presidency Project

Hosted at UC Santa Barbara, the American Presidency Project brings together 135,730 Presidential and Non-Presidential Records from the earliest presidents to the present.

Asia for Educators

Asia for Educators (AFE) is designed to serve faculty and students in world history, culture, geography, art, and literature at the undergraduate and pre-college levels. 

Avalon Project: Ancient Documents from Yale

Digital documents relevant to the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government from ancient times.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States

This website contains approximately 1,600 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom: Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860); The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877); Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932); The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945); The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975); The Contemporary Era (1976-2000).

Black Studies 

This database combines primary and secondary sources, including leading historical Black newspapers, archival documents and collections, key government materials, videos, writings by major Black intellectuals and leaders, scholarly journals, and essays by top scholars in Black Studies. Additionally, Black Studies includes easy to use functionality such as timelines, topic pages, and collection pages.

Civil Rights Digital Library

The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.

David Rumsey Map Collection

The David Rumsey Map Collection from Stanford University focuses on rare 16th through 21st century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, wall maps, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children's, and manuscript maps. Items range in date from around 1550 to the present. Viewers have access not only to high resolution images of maps that are extensively cataloged, but also to a variety of tools that allow users to compare, analyze, and view items in new and experimental ways.

Densho

Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II, offering irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources.

Digital Public Library of America

Highlights the collections from libraries, archives and museums across the United States.

DOCSteach

Hosted by The National Archives; search thousands of primary source documents.

Documenting the American South

Hosted by UNC Chapel Hill Libraries, DocSouth is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Europeana

Europeana brings together thousands of European archives, libraries and museums and research to provide access to millions of books, music, artworks and more.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project from Fordham University 

These sourcebooks offer collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts related to Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies.

Library of Congress Digital Collections 

Primary source material including historical documents, maps, photographs and sound collections from The Library of Congress.

• Library of Congress: Country Studies

This collection contains electronic versions of eighty books originally sponsored by the U.S. Army and written by researchers affiliated with the Library’s Federal Research Division. Intended for a general audience, the studies provide descriptions and analyses of lesser-known countries or regions where U.S. military forces might be deployed.

• Law Library of Congress

The Law Library subscribes to a broad range of databases and eResources that provide legal and legislative information for the U.S. and around the globe. While some databases are available only On-site in a Library of Congress Reading Room, others are Open Access (look for "Free Access" in the Availability column).

National Archives

Includes founding documents, archived presidential websites, and other collections.

Project Gutenberg

Choose among free epub books, free kindle books, and many audio books. Download them or read them online. 

World History Encyclopedia 

Covers an array of historical topics and narratives through text, video, interactive features, social media and mobile apps.

Sometimes you'll need to use resources outside of the databases that are available or curated through your school or public library.

The information below will help you to find reliable online sources.

Search Engines

Search engines search webpages for a specified word or words and provide a list of webpages in which they are found. Google and Bing are the most popular search engines.

Search Tips

Limit your search to domains that are considered to be more reliable by adding the phrase site:gov OR site:edu to your search term(s). This will limit your results to the domain .gov websites (published by the U.S. government) and the domain .edu websites (published by educational institutions in the U.S.). Note: be aware that universities may allow their faculty and students to use their .edu domain to create personal websites. If there is a tilde (~) in the address, it may be a personal faculty or student page that is not monitored by the institution. 

Also note that information residing in the .gov domain, while still generally reliable, may be incomplete if it is a webpage that was published by a prior presidential administration. For all webpages, look for messaging at the either the top or the bottom of the webpage that provides information of the currency of a webpage.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an online search engine that specifically searches scholarly literature and academic resources. The scholarly, authoritative focus of Google Scholar distinguishes it from other search engines.

Search Tips

Just because you see something in Google Scholar does not mean that you are able to access it. Most scholarly literature and academic resources are blocked by paywalls set up by publishers who require you to pay to access these resources. However, you may be able to get access to the resources you find through the institutional subscriptions available to you, such as EBSCO, Gale, JSTOR, and ProQuest. Use the links to these databases that are provided in the other sections of this guide, such as General and Interdisciplinary Resources, to search for the titles of the articles you find in Google Scholar. If you need help getting access to a resource you find in Google Scholar, or anywhere else, just ask your school librarian - we know how to use interlibrary loans and other tricks of the librarian trade to get access to just about any physical or digital source of information!

Primary Sources

Primary Sources are created by those who lived through the topic or event you are researching. Any document, image, or artifact created at the time of the topic being researched is a primary source.

Examples: Eyewitness accounts, autobiographies and memoirs, diaries, letters, speeches, reports, newspapers, household and day-to-day objects, clothing, works of art, architecture, and photographs.

Researcher Beware: Primary sources reflect the time period and culture in which they were created and may contain images or language that are considered offensive today.

Searching for Primary Sources

You can use Boolean search delimiters to search for primary sources on any search engine, including Google.

For example, entering "documents" OR "primary sources" "Cold War" in the search bar will find primary source documents related to the Cold War that are available online or are referenced in online documents.

Pro Tip: When searching for websites, add the phrase site:gov OR site:edu to limit your results to the domain .gov for U.S. government agencies and the domain .edu for educational institutions in the U.S, which are generally considered the two most reliable domains.

You may also find primary source material in Google Books. Books that are in the public domain may be available in their entirety (e.g., books published in the U.S. before 1923 or instances where the author failed to renew copyright). Do a keyword, author, or title search and then click on Tools to display limiters. To find entire books that are available for free, choose Free Google ebooks.

Additionally, The Internet Archive is a digital library of Internet sites, books, newspapers, and other cultural artifacts in digital form. It is another place where you can also find primary sources that may exist in these artifacts.

Researcher Beware: Always double-check the author or publisher of a source so that you can evaluate credibility and reliability. Also, always be evaluating any source of information for potential bias. Speaking of credibility, reliability, and bias...

What is Disinformation?

• Disinformation (noun): false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

• Social media has exacerbated the impact of disinformation campaigns.

• Fact-checking and media bias rating websites can help you to combat the disinformation you may be exposed to in your daily life.

Fact-Checking Websites

AP Fact Check

The Associated Press (AP) is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business.

FactCheck.org

A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, FactCheck.org aims to reduce the level of confusion in U.S. politics by monitoring the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players.

Politifact.com

PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. PolitiFact is run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an independent newspaper in Florida and partner news organizations around the country. A project of the Poynter Institute.

PunditFact

PunditFact is a project of the Poynter Institute, dedicated to checking the accuracy of claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers, political analysts, the hosts and guests of talk shows, and other members of the media.

RumorGuard

RumorGuard is a tool created by the News Literacy Project that allows you to see their recent credibility checks, as well as learn how you can use the 5 Factors and other Techniques to check the credibility of news items.

SciCheck

FactCheck.org’s SciCheck feature focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims.

Media Bias Rating Websites

Allsides

Allsides.com exposes people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world — and each other. The AllSides Media Bias Chart™ helps you to easily identify different perspectives and political leanings in online news content so you can get the full picture and think for yourself.

Media Bias / Fact Check

An independent website that rates the bias, factual accuracy, and credibility of media sources...MBFC is trusted by major media outlets and IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network) fact-checkers, frequently being referenced by sources such as USA Today, Reuters Fact Check, Science Feedback, Washington Post, and NPR.

Cascade PBS (Teacher In-Class Use Only: Email Liz Ebersole for login instructions)

Independent, nonprofit public media organization serving audiences in Western and Central Washington and British Columbia, providing broadcast, streaming, podcasting. Our account allows us to access subscribers-only content, including all PBS video content. Teacher in-class use only.

Classroom Video On Demand: Master Collection (Google SSO)

Part of our Infobase suite. All subject areas. Standards-aligned videos, educator guides, assessment tools, accessibility features. Students can independently access content.

Digital Theatre Plus (Teacher Initiated Only; Google SSO)

Access to award-winning theatre productions and video lessons about all aspects of theater production. Also has Study Units with lesson plans and resources tailored to content. Some ELA content, including poetry. Teachers can create links to share content with students. Here are some guides that will help you learn how to share content with students, etc.:

• Using DT+ to Teach Theatre - Training Video Course

• Using DT+ to Teach English - Training Video Course

• How to use Digital Theatre+ resources in Canvas

Swank (Teacher Initiated Only; Google SSO)

Access to more than 40,000 films from all major studios. Plus, expanded curated collections, including titles from Discovery, Bill Nye, Smithsonian & more. Design features that make it easy to connect film content with any subject and teaching support resources, including lessons & key scenes guides. Teachers can create links to share content with students. The Instructor Training video will help you learn about special features. For example, at about the 3-minute mark, they show you how to use the bookmarking feature to save time by bookmarking entire films or even excerpts from films. Advance request needed for each use (24 hours). 

Style Guides

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

The Purdue OWL has a wealth of resources for the major style guides (APA, Chicago, MLA), including sample papers for each style that are annotated to describe the features of each style.

• They also have excellent resources for using citation generators responsibly.

Notetaking or Citation Software

NoodleTools 

The Bush School provides NoodleTools accounts for all students & faculty. Use NoodleTools to create an outline, organize your research, and properly cite sources. Create your account using the Microsoft 365 login option and remember to use this login option each time you login.

• In order to use the citation export option that is integrated into our subscription databases, you need to first be logged in to NoodleTools.

• Be sure to check out the Noodle Tools Knowledge Base to learn how to create a Project, an Outline, and Notecards, as well as the many other features available.

Using AI for Citations

Google Gemini and other generative AI can create accurate simple MLA citations, but as with all AI output, they must be checked for accuracy. Complex MLA and Chicago Style citations require using citation generators that are trained in those styles. To ensure accuracy and an ease of process, it is highly recommend that you use the NoodleTools research management software that we provide for you.

Avoiding Plagiarism

Scribbr: Avoid Plagiarism Playlist

The first four videos in this YouTube Playlist will help you to understand plagiarism and how to avoid it through careful use of quotes and paraphrasing. Note: Scribbr is a for-profit company and these videos include advertisements for their products. My recommendation that you watch their high-quality videos to learn about plagiarism does not mean that you need to use their products.