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Warwick IB English: Main

Warwick High School IB Program

Welcome

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Free Databases and Sources

Although you are limited to what you can search with when off campus, there is information on your topic out there someplace.  If you are ever having trouble, please use the reference chat option to have a librarian help you!

Helpful Links

* Purdue Owl - APA, MLA and more - guides.  owl.english.perdue.edu

* Help with formatting citations.  www.citationmachine.net

* Zotero: a Firefox plug-in citation helper.  www.zotero.org

* Use Prezi instead of Powerpoint.  www.prezi.com

*Another bibliography and citation tool. www.bibme.org

Library Basics

Primary versus Secondary Sources – A primary source is the actual information tied directly to an event or from that event.  A secondary source is regurgitated information that is relying on a primary source or maybe not. 

Abstract – Simply a summary of an article – do not use this to cite!  You must have an entire article when citing. 

A scholarly publication is one in which the content is written by experts in a particular field of study - generally for the purpose of sharing original research or analyzing others' findings. Scholarly work will thoroughly cite all source materials used and is usually subject to "peer review" prior to publication. This means that independent experts in the field review, or "referee" the publication to check the accuracy and validity of its claims. The primary audience for this sort of work is fellow experts and students studying the field. As a result the content is typically much more sophisticated and advanced than articles found in general magazines, or professional/trade journals.

In brief, scholarly work is:

  • written by experts for experts
  • based on original research or intellectual inquiry
  • provides citations for all sources used
  • is usually peer reviewed prior to publication

Popular sources

While many of your research projects will require you to read articles published in scholarly journals, books or other peer reviewed source of information, there is also a wealth of information to be found in more popular publications. These aim to inform a wide array of readers about issues of interest and are much more informal in tone and scope. Examples include general news, business and entertainment publications such as Time Magazine, Business Weekly, Vanity Fair.

  • Note, special interest publications which are not specifically written for an academic audience are also considered "popular" i.e., National Geographic, Scientific American, Psychology Today.

Professional/Trade sources

These are more specialized in nature than popular publications, but are not intended to be scholarly. These types of publications are aimed at experts in the field and/or keen amateurs, but the content focuses on news, trends in the field, promotional material etc. Research findings are not typically disseminated here - though they may report that a scholarly publication is forthcoming. These types of publications typically will contain more advertising than a scholarly journal - though it's usually targeted to the field in some way. Examples: Publishers Weekly; Variety; Education Digest

source: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Library:Scholarly_versus_Popular_Sources 

  **Doing a smart Google search – type (site:gov, site:edu or filetype:pdf) and then a search term to get better information than just a general search.  Google Scholar is great and will even link from articles into some of our databases, but not all.  It is not a substitute for searching within the databases we have. 

***Wikipedia – sure you can use it, but you really shouldn’t rely on it as completely factual.  One thing that Wikipedia is good for is finding other sources and getting general knowledge of a topic.  Most articles have links to websites and articles at the bottom of each entry.    

 

 

 

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Johnnie Gray
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Trible Library, Media Center, 2317D
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