Primary versus secondary sources

When conducting research on your topic, it is often helpful to consider the type of documents you need. One distinction to make is whether or not you need to refer to primary or secondary resources. Take a look at the following web pages from other university websites that offer good definitions for primary and secondary sources.

1. Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources (University of Maryland).
2. How To Distinguish Between Primary and Secondary Sources (University of California Santa Cruz)
3. Research Help: Primary vs. Secondary Sources (Manhattan Community College)

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New tutorials are on the way!

In the coming weeks, EBSCOhost will be unveiling a new interface for their databases, which include ERIC, Academic Search Premier, PsycINFO, and others. To help familiarize our students with the new interface, we are updating our research tutorials to reflect the changes. In addition, this summer we hope to create new tutorials for the Business Source Premier database and resources related to Non-Profit Management. So keep your eyes open for new tutorials!

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Developing a good research question

Thinking of your research paper topics yet? Take a look at the following short tutorial: Developing a good research question. Your ability to focus on your topic and develop a strong thesis statement will help in the long run. Once you know the question(s) you need to answer, then you will be ready to conduct your research.

Find E-books with OAIster

Looking for publicly available electronic books on the web. Try using the OAIster search engine! OAIster takes advantage of the many persons and institutions involved in the Open Archives Initiative. Unlike the Google Books Project, OAIster provides complete access to thousands of items in the public domain. If you need a book for your topic, and you need it NOW, check OAIster!

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Newspapers in LexisNexis Academic

LexisNexis Academic is a large database, popular with many academic and public libraries, in part because it offers full text access to hundreds of local, regional, national, and international newspapers. The tutorial below describes how to search the LexisNexis database for newspaper articles.

Note: This tutorial was produced by the library at Georgia Tech. To access the LexisNexis Academic database via the Regis Library, go to the A-Z database list.

Library search plug-ins!

Hot of the press, the Regis Library Distance Learning and Electronic Services departments now offer browser plug-ins for Firefox and Internet Explorer users. The Regis Library LibX toolbar allows you to search by keyword, title, author, subject, ISSN/ISBN, or call number in Lumen (Regis Library catalog), Prospector (statewide Colorado library catalog) or Google Scholar. Want an even easier way to search the library catalog, try the search engine plug-in for Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 instead. Both of these plug-ins allow you to search the library direct from you browser, without opening the library catalog in a new tab or window. Quick, easy, and convenient. And all for you!

Click here to get the plug-ins

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Subject searching and you!

One of the primary differences between searching the Web using Google and searching the library databases is the ability to perform a subject search. When you search Google, you are performing a keyword search. Your search terms can appear anywhere in your results.

In contrast, most of the library databases allow you to search by subject. This is because someone at the database examines each article and identifies the subjects it covers. Subject headings (sometimes called descriptors, or more generically tags) are applied to each article and can be viewed in the database record for each item.

So when you search the library databases (1) determine if the database indexes materials by subject (2) identify the subject headings or descriptors used by the database for your topic (3) perform a subject search using the appropriate subject terms and phrases. This require a bit more work and investment at the beginning of your search. However, the payoff is a much more precise search with results that are highly relevant to your topic. Take a look at the subject searching tutorial to discover strategies for identifying the subject headings you should be using in your searches!

Compare this search method with a web search using Google. More often than not with Google you get hundreds of thousand of results, and then have to sort through all those results to identify relevant items. You might be inclined to just go with the first few results you get, but is that really what you want to do for an academic paper? Remember, as a student at Regis you are responsible for learning the content of your course, but you also should take the initiative to learn about new search tools and information resources. You already know about Google, so why not explore Business Source Premier, America History and Life, PsycINFO, and more!

In addition, web search engines will often direct you popular resources like Wikipedia or About.com. These websites do have value, but they are not academic or scholarly, and should not be relied upon to perform scholarly research. Instead, look to the library databases which provide you with a focused collection of scholarly peer reviewed journals and trade publications.

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EBSCOhost Tutorials

The Regis Library offers access to several different subject databases via the EBSCOhost platform. EBSCO is a database vendor, and they have several tutorials online covering the basic and advanced features found in any EBSCOhost database. Give them a look, and you’ll know all the ins and outs of searching the EBSCOhost databases.

EBSCOHost tutorials

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Search engines and precision

We all know how the story goes when searching the web using tools like Google and Yahoo. Type in your keywords, hit the search button, and then prepare to sift through hundreds of thousand of results. Google and Yahoo do a fairly good job of relevancy ranking, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could throw out all the garbage before you examine your results. You can achieve this by utilizing the advanced search features of the search engine.

For example, Google allows you to limit your search to a specific domain or range of domains. When conducting academic research, why not limit your search to education websites (.edu). Need to find government reports on poverty? Limit your search to government websites (.gov). Using the advanced search is an great way to narrow your results down to a target universe of relevant websites. With the Web growing exponentially, it makes sense to search only the portions that are meaningful to you.

Complex questions and simple answers

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian at Temple University, has written a thought provoking post about the nature of academic research and the strategies students use to answer complex questions. It is worth reiterating that not all answers are simple, and that the complexity of a question has much to do with the context from which it originates. Context has much to do with how we envision a problem or challenge, as well as determining what the best sources are for answering the question. This is certainly true in academics! Take a moment to read the post and consider how the complexity and context of your research questions will impact the resources you use.

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