Research Help

Do you need help finding, evaluating, or crediting sources of information?

Why is citation an important tool used in academic writing? Created by NCSU, the short video embedded below answers the following:

What is citation?
Why does it matter?

Find

How do I search using a scholarly database? What is the difference between a "scholarly" source and a "popular" source?

There's a new (easier!) way to access these scholarly databases: through the ConnectED tool located on the NCEdCloud dashboard. Click this link to see step by step instructions for accessing ConnectEd.

NCLIVE (& ProQuest)

BCPLS homepage

Library Card Applications: Digital & Paper

UC Berkley's Guide to Comparing Scholarly and Popular Sources

Evaluate

How do I know the source I found is reliable and trustworthy? How do I check to make sure I've collected accurate information? Why should I work to get better at these "information literacy" skills? What is an author saying in this text? What is an author not saying in this text?

Yes, this is a difficult thing to do! Source evaluation takes time and energy and practice; you will probably start out bad at it (just like everyone else). But the good news is that there are tools you can use to help get started, and the more you practice these skills, the better you will get at it!

Most Valuable Tool: Lateral Reading

The entirety of CrashCourse: Navigating Digital Information is basically a whole online class about evaluating information. Watching this series will probably make you a better, more informed citizen.

Finally: The "How would I cite this?" Test basically just asks, "can I find enough information here (e.g. author, date, etc) to create a detailed bibliographic citation for this source?" If you're missing most of those details, you've probably found a bad source.

Credit

How can citing my sources help to strengthen my arguments? How do I avoid plagiarism? Why would readers want to locate my sources; how would they use my citations to do that?

Should I Cite? Flow Chart (OWL)

Research & Documentation Online 5th Edition - This is an older, no longer updated webpage, and it does contain some broken links, but it's still one of the best overviews for figuring out which university academic departments use which style of citation. (e.g., Mouseover "Finding Sources" on the pink "Sciences" sub-menu, and you'll see that Nursing, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Engineering courses all use CSE style citation too—not just the "obvious" sciences: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.)

Tons of universities maintain Library or Writing Center webpages that offer detailed help with citations. Here are a few of my favorites:

UNCG Library Resources Page

UNCG Citations Page

AppState Writing Center

PennState Citations Page

Purdue OWL

KnightCite - Need help building a custom bibliographic citation? KnightCite will do MLA 9, APA 7, and Chicago style...for free!

Links for Teachers

Teachers, here's a folder full of resources and lesson plans, but if you'd prefer to co-teach these topics with Fender, just schedule time in the Media Center and let him know!!!

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