How to Find Sources

Internet search engines like Google are good for exploring and defining your topic, but Google will not reliably return the "scholarly" or "peer reviewed" articles that most instructors will want you to cite.  To find those, you need to use Google Scholar Google Scholar or a library database. What makes Google Scholar so great? Simply, it works like the Google you know, but instead of showing you general internet content like blogs, gossip columns and advertisements, it specifically searches scholarly literature and academic resources.

The content of Google Scholar and library databases and overlap, but they are still different. How?

1. Google Scholar will show you everything related to your search terms - whether you can access it for free or not. Some of what you find on Google Scholar, you'll be asked to pay for. Don't pay! Look for that same title in the library database. If we have it, it will be free to you. If not, ask for it using Interlibrary Loan, which is also free!
2. Google Scholar will show you everything - whether it is related to your subject or not. Depending on your topic, you may need to find creative ways to narrow your search. For example, if I search for "rehabilitation" in a psychology library database, I'll get much different articles than if I search in a criminology library database. In Google Scholar, I'll get both types of articles and I'll need to use additional search terms to narrow my search.

Google Scholar can be great when you are still in the beginning stages of your research and you are still exploring your topic. It will also help you find different ways to phrase your search terms, since you can look at a wide variety of results.

Once you have used Google Scholar to explore your topic, it's time to move to library databases which will always return scholarly articles that your professors will accept. They will also only show you articles that you can see immediately as full-text or that you can easily get using Interlibrary Loan. Furthermore, library databases are specific to your subjects. In other words, there are specific databases for nursing, psychology, equine etc.