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Mount Royal University

Library

Types of Sources

Journal Articles
Look in: LibrarySearch, AAPG, GeoScienceWorld, Google Scholar

Grey Literature (e.g. government publications, technical reports, etc.)
Look in: Google filetype:pdf search, Government repositories

Society publishing (special publications and memoirs)
Look in: LibrarySearch, AAPG, GeoScienceWorld

Conference publications (abstracts, papers)
Look in: LibrarySearch, AAPG

Theses and Dissertations
Look in: LibrarySearch

Finding Materials in the Library

Tips for searching for articles in the library:

  • Be specific
    • Use only terms relevant to your research question
    • Use names of places, features, formations, etc. when possible
  • Use filters
    • You will likely use the peer-reviewed and resource type filters most often
    • The peer-reviewed filter excludes books
    • The peer-reviewed filter includes non-research content in scholarly journals(editorials, conference summaries, book reviews, etc.)
  • Sign in to your account to save search results and searches

Use the search box on the library home page to search within individual journals.

 

Cited Reference Searching

Journal articles cite previous research, usually on similar topics. You can look through literature reviews and reference lists to search out other relevant literature.

If you have found an on-topic journal article, you can use tools to search for articles that have cited your article since it was written.

Google Scholar

Scopus

LibrarySearch

Resources

Finding Project Information

Search for project websites to identify:

Find articles related to the project:

  • Search for articles written by project leads in LibrarySearch
  • Use GeoScienceWorld to find articles by location
  • Search for the project/site in relevant journals (e.g. Scientific Drilling)

For Alberta-based projects, consider these as first steps:

 

Practice

Using the search techniques we discussed:

  • Find 3 publications related to your topic
  • Develop 2 initial research questions. These do not need to be well-formed questions but are avenues for exploration.

Citation

MRU APA Guides

If you use tools to help you cite sources, always double check your reference against the guide. Online tools rarely produce 100% accurate references.

Contact Joel

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Joel Blechinger
he/him/his
Contact:
Email: jblechinger@mtroyal.ca
Phone: 403.440.8624
Office: EL4423E
Website