Skip to Main Content
Banner image of library main space, view from loft
My library account: renew booksLibrary events calendar WU Library on Facebook WU Library on TikTok WU Library on InstagramWU Library on Twitter

Library & Information Science: research tips

screen your resources

Evaluate for quality & reliability

Be a critical consumer of information.  You wouldn't trust a stranger you met on the street to provide information for a paper you were writing, so why would you trust strangers when they publish information online?  Keep the CRAAP analysis in mind as you evaluate materials.

Currency  Refers to the timeliness of the information.  How recently has this information been updated?  How important is having recently published information for your topic? 

Relevancy   Is the information useful in the context in which you plan on using it?  Is it appropriate for college-level research?  Is it the best information out there, or could you find better, more complete info elsewhere? 

Authority  Who is publishing this information?  Does he/she/the organization have a background that makes them experts in this subject matter?  How do you know?

Accuracy  Is the information correct?  Are there spelling or grammatical errors?  If so, you may want to question the accuracy of the information on the site.  Does the website cite any sources?  Where is the author getting his/her information? 

Purpose  Why has the information been published on the web?  To entertain? to sell a product or service?  To inform?  Does the author have any biases?  Might this lead to the information being less credible?

  finding scholarly articles

Use one of our many databases to find journal, magazine, or newspaper articles. 
Some tips:
  • Limit your search to Peer Reviewed or Academic Articles to eliminate magazines, newspapers, and trade publications from your results.
  • Each database has its own set of subject or topics - official terms that the database uses (e.g. urban planning and city planning are very similar, but return different results in the various databases). Use these to narrow or alter your search, making your results much more precise.
  • These databases index a vast amount of information, some of which the library does not own. Click on the "Find Full Text"  button below the article citation to see if the library owns it digitally in another database or if the library owns it in print. 
  • If you find a relevant article but want to keep searching, try checking the box next to the articles to save them for later. You can check several to compile a list and email them to yourself, print them off all at once, or export to RefWorks when you are finished researching.
  • If you find an article the library doesn't own, you can get it through interlibrary loan, or travel to a library that owns the journal.

What is peer review?

Many scholarly journals use a process of peer review prior to publishing an article, whereby other scholars in the author's field or specialty critically assess a draft of the article. Peer-reviewed journals (also called refereed journals) are scholarly journals that only publish articles that have passed through this review process. The review process helps ensure that the published articles reflect solid scholarship in their fields.  More

interlibrary loan

Need a book or journal article we don't have? You can request it through interlibrary loan (ILL). We will borrow a book or get a copy of an article for you from another library and notify you when it arrives. You can request items by filling out an online form or directly through any FirstSearch database (Worldcat, Eric, ArticleFirst).