Research path: evaluate your information
- Scholarly versus popular
- Print versus online
- Primary versus secondary
- Quality versus quantity
Scholarly versus popular | back to top
Faculty often tell students to use scholarly (or academic) sources rather than popular ones. This distinction applies most often to the use of articles found in periodicals (magazines).
Scholarly articles are generally:
- Written by researchers and scholars in an academic field.
- Peer-reviewed (evaluated by outside experts for quality before being accepted for publication. The periodical usually locates its policies on the table of contents or staff pages ).
- Reporting original research and scholarship (results of original inquiry).
- Lengthy, written in specialized language for other scholars, well footnoted and includes a bibliography of sources.
- Serious in appearance, mostly text plus charts and graphs, few glossy photos or illustrations.
Popular articles are generally:
- Written by reporters or magazine staff. The author may not even be listed.
- Chosen for publication by an editor or board of the magazine.
- Providing general information or entertainment or reporting on ideas originating elsewhere.
- Typically brief, rarely cite sources, written for the general public or interested non-specialist in simple language.
- Eye-catching in appearance, often well illustrated. The publication usually contains lots of advertisements.
Many of the same distinctions apply to books. The author’s credentials, the writing style, the presence (or lack) of footnotes and the type of publisher (university press or mass-market publishing house) should all be looked at as part of the evaluation of the quality of a particular book. See Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals.
Print versus online | back to top
Many sources which were previously available only in print format are now also available electronically. In some cases, the print version has been discontinued and completely replaced by an online version. This is particularly true of databases (indexes) for locating journal articles. Those resources linked to the library web page have been chosen for their value to the curriculum. You will still need to evaluate the results of your searches, but the resources are provided through library subscriptions because of the value of the content to the campus community.
Sites which are freely available over the web, such as those found by a search in Google or Yahoo, require thorough evaluation because the quality of the content can vary so widely. Read more about how to evaluate web sites.
Primary versus secondary | back to top
Sometimes faculty recommend or require the use of primary sources. These are original documents related to an event or topic, including diaries and personal eyewitness accounts, interviews, speeches, creative and artistic works and first-hand reports of events such as newspaper articles. Example: A diary of darkness: the wartime diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi
Secondary sources analyze and comment on primary sources. These may include books or articles written by scholars who interpret past events or synthesize previous research. Example: To Eagle against the sun: the American war with Japan by Ronald H. Spector.
Both types of sources can be valuable in the sense that original data can be both examined and interpreted later by scholars and researchers.
Using Primary Sources on the Web from Reference and User Services Association-History Section, American Library Association
Quality versus quantity | back to top
A common problem, whether searching the catalog for books or a database for articles, is finding entirely too many items on the topic. If the list retrieved is large, many items may seem irrelevant or at least of limited usefulness. There are some techniques that can be used to retrieve a smaller number of more useful items.
Many resources, particularly databases for journal articles, allow you to combine topics instead of just searching for a single word or phrase. This process, referred to as “Boolean” searching, generally uses the word “and” to link topics together and indicate that you want items containing both terms or topics. Example: multicultural education and middle schools. This combination will produce a much smaller list of items than simply searching multicultural education, but the items retrieved will all relate to the desired grade level.
A common cause of finding “too much stuff” even if a Boolean search is done is that databases generally search by keyword. In the case of journal articles, terms are searched as they appear in the article titles, the list of subject headings assigned to the article and in the abstract (summary) as well. Often words appear in the abstract which are only marginally relevant to the real content of the article.
There are several options for getting results that are more relevant and focused on the topic at hand:
- Some databases have relevancy ranking options for the results. (Generally results are presented in chronological order.)
- Most databases have a controlled vocabulary which allows searching by descriptor, the subject headings assigned to the article according to its content. There is usually a thesaurus, either print or online, of that vocabulary.
- Searching only for words that appear in the titles or articles can help cut the volume of results down. Some useful articles may be missed, but those retrieved should be very relevant to the topic at hand.
- Limiting to peer-reviewed journals and excluding popular magazines can also be a useful approach.
If you are not finding what you need, get in touch with one of the reference librarians by coming to the reference desk on the first floor of the library or Ask a Librarian.
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