reference databases

reference databases

Weather Resources

Weather Resources

Has the bad weather got you down?  Well, your library might not be able to make it any warmer, but we have plenty of resources to help you understand it! Among our encyclopedic databases, AccessScience has some good articles on weather and weather prediction.  Science Resource Center has similar articles on weather mapping and forecasting, but has the added benefit of linking to a few journal articles and instructions for some novel do-it-yourself experiments, like making a homemade anemometer to measure wind speed.  Encyclopedia Britannica Online has some good, easy-to-digest material on the topic as well. And other, more traditional databases like Wiley Online Library have access to a number of weather-related journals such as “International Journal of Climatology” and … Continued
Daily Life through History

Daily Life through History

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be a Viking? How about a factory worker in Victorian England or a warrior in 17th century Japan?  What was life like for the people building the pyramids in Ancient Egypt or experiencing the rise of Soviet power in Russia? If you’re interested in history, or even just curious about what it was like when, then the database “Daily Life through History” is one for you. This valuable resource, available through IU East Campus Library, is easy to navigate and fun to explore. You’ll find concise and helpful articles, citations, pictures, maps, provocative questions, and interesting facts. With this database, you won’t just learn about the rich, powerful or … Continued
CredoReference

CredoReference

You may be familiar with some of our bigger and better known databases – EBSCO, JSTOR, ProQuest – but we have some real treasures among the lesser-known ones, too.  CredoReference is one of them. CredoReference is like a reference shelf full of hundreds of dictionaries, encyclopedias, quotation guides, and biographies all in one place.  Some are specialized, focusing on subjects like business or medicine.  Some are general works.  But the strength of this database is its interconnectedness.  And while you have the standard encyclopedia entries, you also have access to multimedia content including images, maps, videos, music files, tables, and statistics – all linked together. Have you ever used the Encyclopaedia Britannica?  While reading an article about Mozart, have you … Continued
The Un-Wikipedia

The Un-Wikipedia

Have you ever been researching a topic for class and really needed an encyclopedia?  We’ve all been there, and often we click to Wikipedia. That sometimes is okay for getting you familiar with a topic, but for academic purposes, that source just isn’t reliable enough….even according to that online encyclopedia’s founder! (http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Wikipedia-Founder-Discourages/2305) Fortunately, the IU East Campus Library subscribes to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. This is a thorough and reliable encyclopedia assembled, like the old paper version, by the best minds in their fields.  Like many of the resources IU East subscribes to, it has been rigorously peer-reviewed and verified for accuracy.  Wikipedia is produced by its users – some are quite smart, others not so much.  The Encyclopaedia Britannica counts some … Continued
The Right Cite

The Right Cite

So, it’s a third of the way into the semester, and you have some papers coming due.  Research papers.  And you need to cite your sources.  Well, there are many helpful aids to doing that.  We have the style manuals at the library’s front desk that you can use.  And we, and our colleagues in the Writing Lab, are glad to help you figure them out.  There’s the Online Writing Lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/, which is great for getting you through MLA or APA style.  And there’s RefWorks, a program we subscribe to that will help you generate whole reference lists. But for a lot of things, references are even simpler than all that!  For many of our databases, citations can … Continued