Resources

This page houses a collection on-campus and web-based resources to help increase your chances of academic success.

Academic Resources Available at Centenary

CENTENARY STUDENT TUTORS

The Student Resource Center is staffed with student tutors who work on a nightly basis to assist students with homework help, test preparation, essay-writing skills, and general study needs.

Apart from the physical resources (books, periodicals, and journals) available in the library, Magale also offers some key resources online. Their Online Research Page offers indispensable access to thousands upon thousands of academic journal articles and books for research papers, while the card catalog allows you to see what physical books are available without leaving your dorm room. In-depth subject guides provide journals and links specific to your particular discipline, and inter-library loans (ILL) allow you to quickly and easily order books on their web page that you'd like to check out, even if they aren't available in Magale Library itself. Above all, don't feel reserved or shy in using all the resources that the library has to offer during your time at Centenary! It's here for you!

Your professors, academic adviser(s), and fellow students.

Online Writing Resources

PURDUE OWL WRITING CENTER

Purdue University's website offers lots of writing, research, and grammar help, as well as a wealth of information on style guides such as MLA (Modern Language Association) and CMS (Chicago Manual of Style). It is one of the best, most detailed writing resources around, if a little difficult to navigate without knowing what you're looking for. As a good starting point, see the site map for a full list of all the academic writing articles, and check out their Research and Citation Resources for a solid, in-depth guide on the necessary formatting and citation requirements in college papers.

DOCSTYLES STYLE GUIDE "CRIB SHEETS"

Crib sheets are amazing tools for students, especially incoming first-year students. They distill style guides like MLA and CMS into their most important parts; the site describes grammar, bibliography, formatting, and other style guide requirements with minimal verbiage, and provides clear-cut solutions. They are also available for download as PDF files, allowing them to be carried portably on a flash drive, or printed for easy reference.

HARVARD WRITING CENTER RESOURCES

Harvard has prepared some simple, interesting and useful guides targeted at improving student writing. From topics such as "Developing a Thesis" and "Beginning the Academic Essay," to "Revising the Draft" and "Writing with Sources," this website provides targeted tools that walk students through the entire process of writing a college essay.

University of Chicago: Writing in College: A Short Guide to College Writing

Outlining the key differences between high-school and college writing, the University of Chicago's guide allows first-year students an easy glimpse into the nature of writing undergraduate papers. Also includes a very useful section on dealing with writer's block, the bane of every college essay writer. Available in standard HTML, or in a downloadable PDF format.

GUIDE TO GRAMMAR AND WRITING

If grammar, style, and syntax are problem spots, be sure to check out this site. Although it is rather poorly organized and a little antiquated, the Guide to Grammar and Writing is an extraordinarily detailed reference page where you can do anything from learning to write an essay to finding the answer to a simple grammar question.

Study and Academic Success Resources

DARTMOUTH ACADEMIC SKILLS CENTER

This site discusses time management, textbook reading, where/how to study, how to manage stress/anxiety. It also offers QuickTime videos on academic success subjects like notetaking, time management, and stress management.

STUDY SKILLS SELF-HELP INFORMATION (VIRGINIA TECH)

This is an all-around useful site with information and ‘self-help’ strategies ranging from time management to how to read a difficult book to writing papers. There’s also a study skills checklist that can help you identify problem areas.

Study Skills Self-Help Information (Virginia Tech)

HANDOUTS - THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS LEARNING CENTER

This website offers useful handouts in four categories: 1) Time and Goals; 2) Strategic Learning; 3) Tests; and 4) Reading and Writing. A useful and easy way to up your learning IQ and become a better student. All are offered in a convenient downloadable PDF format.

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO STUDENT DEVELOPMENT CENTER

This site includes an academic success checklist, where you can rate your learning skills. One helpful component is the “Top Ten Tips for Academic Success” (available within the Learning Topics Online section).

HOW-TO-STUDY.COM STUDY SKILLS TOPIC PAGE

A valuable collection of articles on varied topics concerning study skills and ways to improve your learning experience, this page gives many useful tips on becoming a better student.

Study Skills-Middle Tennessee State University

This site has a ‘Strategies for Success’ list towards the bottom of the site, listing such strategies as “Ten Tips You Need to Survive College” and “Strategies for Taking Any Tests.”

LSU CENTER FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS

A very useful website with online workshops on Test Preparation, time management, notetaking and comprehension, test anxiety, college reading strategies, and more. Also includes a very useful targeted section with a plan for success, which provides tips on learning styles, getting organized, passing tests, and reducing stress.

Reference, Learning and Research Tools

WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY AND THESAURUS ONLINE

The quintessential American English dictionary, Webster's is one of the best options in the field of online dictionaries. A strong English-Spanish dictionary is also available on the website.

LAROUSSE BI-LINGUAL DICTIONARIES

Offering some of the most solid online bi-lingual dictionaries around, LaRousse gives excellent translations for French, German, Spanish and Italian. For francophones, this website also has the very in-depth Larousse encyclopedia available completely free, an indispensable resource.

WORDREFERENCE BI-LINGUAL DICTIONARIES

Providing dynamic and detailed translations between languages, Wordreferences is a powerful tool for language-learners. With everything from French to Russian, Chinese to Arabic, as well as monolingual English and Spanish dictionaries (not to mention extremely accurate verb conjugators for several languages), this is a sprawling, valuable dictionary site (if sometimes wanting in terms of accuracy or idiomatic expressions). Also contains a very useful forum site to ask questions about specific definitions or usage problems with native users.

CIA WORLD FACTBOOK

An invaluable source of data on the world, providing up-to-date information "on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities." Very useful in researching other nations and regions.

SPARKNOTES

The infamous Cliff's Notes have been in recent years more-or-less supplanted by SparkNotes, who offer their guides online for free (although you have to pay to download PDFs or get a paper copy). While a lot of students use them for simply skimming over difficult works they have little intent to read, this is neither their intended use, nor what the guides are best at (in fact, reading Sparknotes alone can give only a superficial knowledge of the text. They are amazing, however, at helping to attain a deeper knowledge of a text one has just read, working to implant important details in the mind, draw together key themes, and create a solid framework of analysis; for this, they come highly recommended.

Centenary College of Louisiana