A student comes up to the desk and says that he needs two scholarly articles to write a paper for school. How do I help him?

You can see whether or not an article is scholarly by checking for footnotes or looking at the end of the article to see if there’s a list of references.  Another clue is to see if the author is affiliated with an institution such as a university.  Many scholarly journals have as part of their title the words journal, review, or research.  Check to see if the publication comes from a professional organization.  And if the article has either technical terms or vocabulary, that could mean it’s a scholarly article.

Many databases will make the task of searching for scholarly articles easier – they do the work for you.  When you enter your search terms, look at the display to see if there’s a place to check off for scholarly journals.  Sometimes this is called peer-reviewed or maybe refereed.  When you get your hits, the articles will be selected for scholarly articles only and you are on your way.

For more information and tips for finding scholarly articles, check out the Finding Scholarly Articles How-to Guide by the Periodicals Department.

Why should you cite the source to your customers? How do I do it?

In our efforts to answer reference questions completely, we need to remember to cite the source of the information we’ve found. Why is this important and how do we do it?

First, citing the source assures the customer that the information we’re giving comes from an authoritative and reliable source.

Second, and this is especially important if you’re helping a student, citing the source gives the customer a way to verify and double check the information later on if necessary.

Third, sometimes there can be more than one ‘right’ answer to a question. Citing the source validates where the information was found.

Finally, citing the source is critical when working with customers electronically or over the phone since they can’t see the materials you’re using.

How do we cite sources? A lot depends on the type of source you’re using. A basic citation includes the author, title, publication date, and page or table number. If the source is part of a multi-volume set, mention the volume number, and, if it’s a particular edition, mention that, too. If you’re using a database or Website, give the URL. If the URL is a long one, another option is to tell the customer which search engine to use (Google, for instance), the words to type into the search box, and which document has the information (the third listing on the second page, for instance).  The Website Citation Machine gives examples of what elements to cite and how different types of sources should be cited.