David realizes that he needs a little bit of background before he gets started…
David: I’m trying to research the concept of traditions for my religious studies midterm.
Hannah: That topic’s not broad at all…
David: I know, I know, I just think I need to be able to define it as a general concept so I can apply it to a few rituals we’ve studied in different religions.
Hannah: Oh, you need a definition. Once, I talked to a librarian about defining civil rights, and we looked up the term I was researching in a bunch of encyclopedias.
David: Did it work?
Hannah: Yeah, we found a really good one. The encyclopedia article even had a list of works cited, so I used some of those as sources for my presentation.
To see what David's process of finding background materials looked like, click here.
Before you jump into looking for detailed sources on specific aspects of your topic, it can be very helpful to get a lay of the land by doing some background reading in reference sources. Reading an encyclopedia article or other reference source is a quick way to:
familiarize yourself with the basics of the topic: concepts, controversies, time, and place
find the names of people who are associated with the topic
decode some of the jargon associated with the topic
possibly find additional sources using the bibliography of an article or chapter
Here are four ways to find background sources:
use the library catalog, which you can limit to search only books in the reference collection
use Reference Universe, a database that searches inside of print books to locate articles on and references to your topic
To find relevant sources using this search, try to think about the general subject of your topic. For example, we don't have an encyclopedia of the Beatles, but we do have encyclopedias of popular music.
Reference Universe is a database that searches the article titles and indexes of print and online reference materials. So, you won't be limited to searching for encyclopedias on the broad area of your topic and hoping it has something about the specific thing you are interested in. You can search for the Beatles rather than for popular music.
To search Reference Universe, go to its homepage or use the searchbox below:
Search Reference Universe:
Electronic Reference sources
The library subscribes to a number of reference resources that can be used entirely online. Here are the major ones:
