What is background information?
Background information, or reference information, is the type of information you could get from Wikipedia. These resources will give you trustworthy overviews of a topic and provide you with basic things like dates, events and facts about your topic. Generally, you can think of this information in terms of the who, what, where and when of a topic.
Sociological Information
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Global Road WarriorPractical business travel guide to over 175 countries. In addition to basic geographical information such as climate and demographics, has great information about doing business in the selected country. Information includes business ethics, how meetings are conducted, proper business attire & attitudes toward time and punctuality. Social and cultural information such as education, language, music, and food are included. Technical information about internet connections, communications, health and medical for the traveler is also included. World Trade Press
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Dictionary of the Social SciencesThis resource contains concise, clearly written definitions of important terms in anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, human geography, cultural studies and Marxism
Where to Find Background Information
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Credo ReferenceThis Complete Core Collection includes over 1200 from major reference works, to multi-volume subject encyclopedias, to field guides, to scholarly handbooks, to animations and countless other award-winning sources – spans across all disciplines with something for libraries of all types. Also included are nearly 2,000 short reference videos, more than 550,000 high-resolution art images, photographs and maps across all subject areas. Credo
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Gale eBooksA database of full-text encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Gale
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MasterFILE CompleteDesigned specifically for public libraries, this multidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 2,000 general reference publications with full text information dating as far back as 1922. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, it also contains full text for more than 1,000 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 502,000 photos, maps & flags. EBSCO