Building resilience against hunger and malnutrition in Burkina Faso. Photo by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, 2013, under license CC BY-NC-ND
Reading some general information about your topic before formulating your research question or beginning research gives you several benefits:
You can search specialized encyclopedias and other reference books through our databases such as:
Or you can get started with one of our highlighted reference works on food and related topics below:
The New Faces of American Poverty by
A timely examination of the effects of the Great Recession on Americans and the resulting federal reforms to healthcare, employment, and housing policies as a means to alleviate poverty.The Great Recession (2007 to 2009) brought the United States--routinely touted as the richest country in the world--to historical levels of poverty. Rising unemployment, government budget crises, and the collapse of the housing market had devastating effects on the poor and middle class. This is one of the first books to focus on the impact of the Great Recession on poverty in America, examining governmental and cultural responses to the economic downturn; the demographics of poverty by gender, age, occupation, education, geographical area, and ethnic identity; and federal and state efforts toward reform and relief. Essays from more than 20 contributing writers explore the history of poverty in America and provide a vision of what lies ahead for the American economy.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty (2nd ed.) by 
Food in Context by 
Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition (3rd ed.) by 
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture by If the table of contents of an ebook isn't helpful in guiding you to the information you need for your research, you can try two other ways.
First, you can scroll to the end of the table of contents to check if the book has an index. If it does, use that to see if your topic is in the alphabetical list of things covered in the book. Be sure to try any alternate forms if you don't see what you're looking for at first. For example, if the heading "African American sailors" isn't in the list under A, maybe it's a subheading under under "Navy" in N or "United States Navy" in U.
Another method is to use the search with book feature that most ebook platforms have. For example, on Proquest Ebook Central, you can choose Read Online and then you'll be able to use the Search within book feature.
Find more resources from the LaGuardia Library's OneSearch and databases.
Some search terms to try:
When searching in the Library's OneSearch or databases for books and articles, you often need to find materials about more than one concept (food traditions of African Americans) or search for various ways of expressing these concepts (food traditions/cooking/cuisine) in order to find more of what's available.
Here's a video tutorial that explains how to do this efficiently using the Boolean connectors AND & OR
Use Ask a Librarian to get research and citation assistance by online chat or email. Or come to the Library, Room E101, to meet with a librarian in-person for assistance.