Gather Background Information on Your Topic
| Encyclopedias
are good sources for background information. They will give you an
overview of the main issues related to your topic. You can
also find specialized encyclopedias in many subject areas,
such as the social sciences. Reading background articles in encyclopedias
can help you find keywords that are related to your topic,
this will help when you begin searching databases for further information.
Try using Encyclopedia Britannica through PC's online
databases. |
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Find Books and Videos/Tapes
| To find books
and videos, you can use the online
catalog at Phoenix College Library, or use a library that is close
to your home. Books and audiovisual materials will provide more in-depth
coverage of your topic. Books can be current, but they can also
provide historical information which can be harder to find
in periodicals. If you find a book that is related to your topic,
but broader in scope, you can check the index and table of contents
of the book, to see if there is a chapter or section about your specific
topic. |
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Find Periodical Articles (Magazines,
Journals, Newspapers..)
To find magazine,
newspaper, and journal articles, use PC's online
databases. Periodical
articles will usually provide more current information than
books or encyclopedias. They are narrower in scope, and discuss
a specific topic in a detailed manner. It is best to
search several of the databases to ensure that you get good coverage
of your topic. Each database indexes some periodicals that the others
don't. There are also subject specific databases, such as "Health
Source Plus" that can be very helpful if they relate to your
topic.
Sometimes your instructor will want you to only use information from
scholarly journals. Several of the online databases have a
checkbox that allows you to limit your search to "refereed publications"
or "peer reviewed" sources. This means the articles have
been published in a scholarly journal that reviews the content before
publishing. If you need help figuring out if a publication is a journal
or a magazine, ask a reference librarian, or look at one of the following
sources:
Popular
Magazines vs. Scholarly Journals (Duke University Libraries) |
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Search For Internet Resources
| You can search
for information on the World Wide Web using Internet search
engines. Phoenix College librarians have created Research
Guides that can also point you to useful and reliable library
resources and/or internet resources. Information on the web can be
used to supplement your other sources. Often websites have
very current information. Sometimes they contain information,
such as up-to-date statistics or graphics, that is hard
to find in other sources. Since anyone can post a web site, it is
very important to use caution and carefully
evaluate information that is found on the Internet. |
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