The Library offers a variety of electronic databases to support research assignments and personal interests. These databases identify articles in scholarly journals, popular magazines and newspapers. Many of the articles are available full text in the databases.
These databases are not the Internet; the Library pays a subscription fee for each database.
Note below how to distinguish scholarly from popular or news articles.
Scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles
- Primary source of information, original research
- Firsthand report of research
- Author(s) conducted the research, scholars in the discipline
- Audience - academic communities, scholars, researchers
- Language - scholarly, technical, language of the discipline
- Research articles are lengthy
- Bibliography included (use to identify additional articles)
- Peer review of articles for publication (other scholars in that discipline review the article content)
Popular or news articles
- Secondary source of information
- Newspapers, magazines and trade publications fall into this category
- Secondhand report of research
- Author(s) did not conduct the research, not scholars in the field but rather journalists
- Audience - general public
- Language - accessible, easily understood
- No bibliography
- No peer review (editor or editorial board but not scholars)
