Your university’s library can be one of the greatest resources for you throughout your undergraduate experience. Today, the library is so much more than a physical building: in effect, the library is a portal to the world of knowledge. This section will introduce you to the basics of using library resources to find sources.
DEFINING OUR TERMS
One Search: The Library’s meta-search tool that collects search results from the catalog, databases, and other library resources.
Database: Electronic subscription service that indexes journal articles and other sources. Usually, databases have full-text versions of at least some (if not many) articles.
Catalog: The index of all the physical media owned by the library, as well as digital subscriptions through databases.
Google Scholar: Google’s meta-search tool for academic research. This tool may give wider search results, but it is often harder to access full-text versions of sources through Google Scholar. However, this tool can provide a list of more recent sources that have cited a source you already have, which can prove helpful for many research projects.