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Rider University Libraries

CMP-125 (Peters, Spring 2021)

Locate Information

Locate the needed information through searching and extracting the relevant information.

 

If you are having trouble finding information on your topic, always feel free to ask a librarian!
  • When do you need for your research: books, magazine, journals or newspapers? Check out this research guide The Best Source Types.
  • How do you know if an article is scholarly?  Watch the short video.

 

"Peer reviewed" means that the article has gone through a vetting or review process.  That is, experts in the same field as the author of the article have evaluated the author's scholarship and made sure that his or her methods, research, theories, and conclusions are sound and backed up by other scholarship or research. Often, a double-blind peer-review process is used, where the author and reviewers are unknown to each other, to ensure that personal bias does not affect the evaluation of scholarship.

Journals may be scholarly or academic without necessarily being peer-reviewed.  In this case, a editor in the discipline or an editorial board makes the decision to publish another expert's work. Ask your professor whether or not your article needs to be peer-reviewed in addition to being scholarly.

Source Types

Characteristics

Used for

Disadvantages

Scholarly Journals

(also called "academic journals")

·   Articles reviewed by experts in the field.

·   Contain original research and new discoveries; cover one or a few experiments.

·   Written for and by professionals in the particular field.

·   Long (10+ page) articles with sections such as abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion

·   Use language specific to the field.

·   Provide authors’ name and usually the credentials.

·   Include bibliographies of sources consulted at the end of articles.

·   Most illustrations are technical and used to explain a point in the article.

 

·   Reliable and valid scholarly content.

·   Updates on new discoveries and studies on a broad subjects.

·   In-depth analysis on the specific topics of a subject.  

·   References for relevant resources on your topic.

 

·   Limited coverage without much historical overview on a subject.

·   Uses the jargon and specialized vocabulary of the profession.

 

 

 

1. Click on the orange Databases button.

2a. Browse by Subject.

All Subjects drop-down menu is open, listing various subjects to choose from

OR

2b. Pick from the letter the database starts with in the A to Z list.

P is chosen from the A to Z list across the top. Databases that start with P are shown.

Library One Search cross-searches most of the library's resources, including books, scores, audios, videos, journal articles, electronic resources, and more.

You can find it on the library website - it's our default search box!

Too many hits?

  • Limit the "Content Provider" option to specific databases.
  • Use the other limits (date, subject) on the left side bar.
  • Limit to "Rider University Libraries Catalog" to find books, DVDs, and government documents in our catalog.

 

These databases are currently NOT YET AVAILABLE for searching via Library One Search.

You will need to search them individually.

 

Found the perfect article but there is no link to the full text? We might have access through another database. 

OR

If you have a citation for a journal article you want to get, use the Journals link to see if the Libraries own or have access to the print or electronic versions of the journal title.

 

  • Type the name of the journal, magazine, or newspaper name in search box to see if it is available in one of our databases or in Moore Library.
  • For the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, use the links under Databases instead.