Intro to Library Research
​Educ 5630

Kyle Feenstra
Education & History Librarian
Elizabeth Dafoe Library

http://slides.com/kfeenstra/

library-orientation-educ-5630/fullscreen

Basic Search for Books and Articles - FAQ

The Information Landscape

Academic
Articles

Scholarly
Journals

Academic Databases

Library
Catalogue

Google
Scholar

Academic
Articles

Pay Wall

Searching
the Library 

vs.

Searching
the Internet

Google

Websites & non-academic articles

What are scholarly journals?

1. The journal publishes current research in a particular academic field.
2. Articles are written for an academic audience in a scholarly community.

Identifying scholarly articles

1. The article presents original research or analysis that is new to the field.
2. Resources used to write the article are adequately cited with a bibliography and/or footnotes. 
3. The author has academic credentials.

What do we mean by "peer review"?

1. Articles submitted to the journal are reviewed by independent scholars prior publication to ensure they meet the standards for research in that field. 

Identifying Peer Reviewed Journals

1. The catalogue or database where it is found identifies the journal as a peer reviewed source. (Example)
2. The journal editors identify the publication as
   peer reviewed. 
3. Peer review claims are confirmed by Ulrich's Web. 

Using Controlled Vocabulary to find Books & Articles

Library catalogues use "controlled vocabularies" to organized materials by subject area. For monographs we call these subject terms.

Using Controlled Vocabulary to find Books & Articles

Databases also use controlled vocabularies often arranged in the form of a thesaurus. ERIC has one of the most widely used thesauri for research in Education.

Subject Terms show us how published information within a domain of knowledge has been categorized in library or database.

Subjects are useful for identifying related materials. 

Keywords appear in the record and text of a document. Keywords represent the language used in a domain of knowledge. 

Keyword search results are based on frequency of word use in a document. 

• Searching with subject terms enables you to find literature pertaining to a particular field of research.
   
• Combinations of subject terms and keywords often produce most precise search results.

Finding Controlled Vocabularies

Use the subject heading search to find the appropriate subject terms for books.

Use the ERIC Thesaurus (in the advanced search) to find the appropriate subject terms for articles.

APA Style Guides

UM Library copies of recommended APA Guides

Questions?

Kyle Feenstra
Education & History Librarian
Elizabeth Dafoe Library
kyle.feenstra@umanitoba.ca