As you are writing your paper you have to think about what your reader needs to know about your topic for your argument to make sense. They'll need an overview or summary in order to understand what you are talking about and the stakes. When you need an overview of a topic, where do you go?
Don't be shy. 🫣 We all know it's Wikipedia.
I know! It's incredibly useful for understanding a topic quickly. And, to be honest, the information is really quite good. It's an excellent starting point when we need a quick overview.
It's easy to forget that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are useful (and sort of fun). The library has many, many, many encyclopedias that can help you to source background information on a topic. For a scholarly paper, even though you might start at Wikipedia (I recommend it actually), you'll want to use what you learn there to find some scholarly encyclopedias and background sources.
These are large, multidisciplinary online reference resources and can be a good starting point for getting background information if you are new to a topic. Each database contains hundreds of subject-specific works and will search across those works when you enter your search terms.
Contains many reference works on a large variety of topics.
There are a lot of different kinds of reference materials such as biographies, handbooks, and directories. Learn more and see examples on the reference research guide.