Library Assistant: Tutorials

When you have a research assignment, be sure to figure out what types of article sources are required or allowed. Some professors require you to use only scholarly peer-reviewed journals while others might let you use a variety of journals.

Scholarly article: Also known as peer-reviewed, academic, or refereed, these articles are written for researchers and experts and usually share the results of a research study. Scholarly articles are written by experts in the field and are reviewed by expert peers. In many databases, you can limit your search to scholarly, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals to weed out any non-scholarly content. Scholarly article example

Professional/trade article: Written for people working in a specific field. Articles can be written by experts in the field or by staff writers. The articles are only reviewed by journal editors, so they go through a less rigorous review process. Trade article example

Popular journals: Written for a general audience rather than for professionals or scholars, and written by journalists. Examples include The New Yorker, People, and Rolling Stone. Popular article example

This quick quiz from the Ithaca College Library will test your knowledge and help you learn to tell the difference between different types of journals.

Books are essential to researchers and often provide a strong overview of a topic. One way to find books on your topic is to use a keyword search to find relevant subjects.

For example, I searched the keyword phrase college study skills in the PCC Library search box. The first result seemed very relevant, a book called College study skills : becoming a strategic learner. I clicked on the linked title of the book, then scrolled to the Item Details heading to view the Subjects you see below. Clicking on a linked subject will get me quickly to more books on the same topic.

This quick quiz from the Ithaca College Library will test your knowledge and help you learn how to properly cite sources.