Unit 6: Types of Articles in Databases

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library databases

After completing this unit you will be able to:

• Identify the icons used by databases to indicate each type of article.

• List added types of information (beyond Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications) that are sometimes included in database results.

• Locate Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publication articles in a library database.

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library database

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library databases

Besides scholarly, popular, and trade sources, some of the other types of information you might find include:

• Dissertations & Thesis: The almost book length research papers written by graduate students as part of the requirements for obtaining a masters or doctoral degree.

• Wire feeds: Similar to newspaper articles. This information is sent directly to subscribers (usually media news outlets like a newspaper or TV station) which they can use to help generate their articles or programming.

• Reviews: Reviews of books, films, products, etc. These are often culled from other periodical sources.

• Conference papers: Similar to scholarly journal articles, conference papers are presented at academic or business conferences, often orally, by the author. A written version is also prepared at the same time. Conference papers also go through some level of review (though not always as rigorously as with scholarly journals) before being accepted for presentation.

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library databases

How do I know if my database results are from a scholarly, popular, or trade publication or something else?

• Databases attempt to give you the "best" results given the search terms (keywords) you use.

• As databases contain many types of periodicals, your search results could come from a number of resource types.

• The major database companies, like Proquest and EBSCOhost will use an icon to indicate from what type of periodical articles originated.

• Often you are able to limit your results to just one type of periodical if you wish.

• Note that one database, JSTOR, contains scholarly journals exclusively.

Let's take a look at how Proquest and EBSCOhost databases present their search results…

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library databases

Proquest Database Results

ENG101: Information Literacy

Unit 6 - Locating Scholarly, Popular, and Trade Publications in library databases

EBSCOhost database results

Depending on your research topic & requirements of your assignment, you'll use many types of periodicals for your research… especially scholarly journals.

In the next unit, we will wrap up the tutorial.