If you do not know enough about your topic even to get started, you will need to find background information. The best place to find background information is the reference collection. The reference collection is a group of non-circulating, highly used materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographical works, maps, almanacs, etc. These sources often represent the most current information the library owns. They answer who, what, where, when and why questions and are more useful for purposes of identification than for in-depth research. The reference section is an excellent "first place to look" when conducting research.
In addition to the general encyclopedias with which you may already be familiar, the Livingston Library has a number of subject encyclopedias that provide background on discipline-specific topics. Some of these include:
The Cold War Encyclopedia
R 909.82503 P21c
Encyclopædia Britannica Online*
Encyclopedia of African American Business History
R 338.6422 En1 1999
Encyclopedia of Banking & Finance
R 332.103 En1 1994
The Encyclopedia of Career Change and Work Issues
R 650.1 En1 1992
The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics
R 330.03 F77 1993
Encyclopedia of World Art
R 703 En1e
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology
R 503 M17m 2002
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
R 780.3 N42n 2001
Oxford Art Online*
Religion: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia
R 200.3 L57r
*Part of the Database Offerings in Galileo, Georgia's Virtual Library.
As you search for sources, keep in mind what type and variety of sources you need, if specified by your instructor. For example, do you need books or journal articles to support your paper? Do you need recent or historical sources? Do you need statistics? News items? Articles from scholarly journals? Will Internet documents suffice, or should you limit your sources to items found in print?
Primary vs. secondary sources
Your instructor may ask you to find some primary sources and some secondary sources. Primary sources are those that provide firsthand knowledge of a topic, or that constitute an original topic in themselves. For example, the live radio broadcast that captured the crash of the Hindenburg is considered a primary source because it provides us with firsthand knowledge of that event. William Faulkner's novel, Light in August, is considered a primary source because it is an original work of art, not a commentary on another work.
Secondary sources are those which interpret primary sources, such as biographies, reviews, and books or articles about a historical event written after the fact. An historical account of the Hindenburg crash that got its information from the live radio broadcast would be a secondary source because it is a secondhand account of the event. A book review of Light in August would be a secondary source because it interprets the primary source, but is not an original work of art in itself.
Examples
Primary: an eyewitness account of an event
Secondary: a secondhand account of an event
Primary: a news report of an event
Secondary: an historical account of an event
Primary: an autobiography
Secondary: a biography
Primary: a diary
Secondary: a thesis about a diary and its historical significance
Primary: a work of art, e.g., poetry, music, or literature
Secondary: criticism and commentary about a work of art
Primary: an original U.S. Census record
Secondary: a set of statistics recently compiled from historical
census records
Primary: an artifact such as an arrowhead, pottery, etc.
Secondary: a photograph or drawing of an artifact
Peer-reviewed vs. popular sources
Your instructor may also make a distinction between peer-reviewed and popular (non-peer-reviewed) sources when referring to articles from periodicals. Peer review refers to a method of choosing articles for publication in a journal that is scholarly or professional in nature.
Whereas articles in popular magazines are typically chosen by
an editor, articles in peer-reviewed journals are chosen by an author's
peers in his field of study. For example, The New England Journal of
Medicine, which is peer-reviewed, employs physicians as peer reviewers.
These physicians read submissions and make recommendations about whether
to accept or reject them for publication. The term "refereed" is a
synonym for peer-reviewed.
Following are some characteristics of peer-reviewed and popular articles.
Peer-reviewed: give an author's name and his or her credentials
Popular articles: may not give an author's name
Peer-reviewed: are written by and for experts or researchers in the
author's field of study
Popular articles: are typically written by non-experts for the general
public
Peer-reviewed: are often accompanied by charts, graphs and diagrams,
but rarely by photographs
Popular articles: may not contain charts or graphs, but often have
photographs
Peer-reviewed: provide bibliographies and footnotes (references)
Popular articles: usually give no references (bibliographies or
footnotes)
Peer-reviewed: are written using the specialized language of a field
Popular articles: are written using layman's language
Peer-reviewed: almost never include advertising
Popular articles: almost always include advertising