What is a Popular Source?
Popular sources are written for a general audience and are intended to inform readers on a broad range of topics, such as news events, topics of current interest, and the business and entertainment worlds. Examples include newspapers, magazines, best-sellers, and consumer-oriented websites. They can be useful for getting ideas for a topic or for background information. When used to document historical events, cultural practices, or public opinion, popular sources may be valuable to researchers as primary source material.
Typical characteristics of popular sources:
- informal in tone and scope, with language that is easily understood by the general public
- often include illustrations or advertisements
- content usually written by journalists, staff writers, or free-lance writers
- do not report on original research, are not peer-reviewed, and rarely include citations
Databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary - good for nearly all subjects. Scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, newspapers, conference proceedings, book reviews, and more.
- Factiva This link opens in a new windowFull-text global news sources, including newspapers, newswires, television and radio transcripts, numerous regional and industry publications, and images from Reuters. Content comes from ~160 countries in 22 languages. Only 3 Oberlin users at one time.
- Japan Times (1897-2019) This link opens in a new windowFull text of all issues of this historically important newspaper covering the years 1897-2015. Japan Times is Japan's oldest English-language newspaper and the country's only independent English-language newspaper today.
Access to major paper's current and historic information, please see below:
New York Times More information
Los Angeles Times More information
Wall Street Journal More information
Washington Post More information
For some magazine database: please visit here.