UGST 1001 - K. Toews - General Education - MRU Library Website at Mount Royal University

Today's Session

In today's class we will cover:

Evaluating the strengths/weaknesses of different types of sources
Using LibrarySearch and Google Scholar to find scholarly articles and books
- Searching by keywords
- Using one source to help you find others
Time to work on your assignments

Evaluating Sources for Credibility

Framework for Evaluating Sources
Practice Activity - How Credible Are These Sources?

When evaluating a source for its reliability and usefulness, consider the following questions. Note: It is often not enough to look on the source itself for the answers to these questions - you may need to fact check information using other trusted sources.

The acronym CRAAP highlights key things to look for when evaluating a source. C is currency - when was the information published. R is relevance - does it relate to my topic. A is authority - who wrote the information. A is for accuracy - how accurate is the information. P is for purpose - why was the information created.

Take a look at your assigned source and answer the following questions. You do not need to read the source in full.

Question 1: What type of source is it? (scholarly article, scholarly book, entry from a reference book (e.g. an academic encyclopedia), magazine article, newspaper article)

Question 2: Using the CRAAP framework, evaluate your source. Would you use it in a university assignment?

Assigned sources

Group 1 - Mom and Dad will hate me: The ethics of writing about family in memoir-fiction

Group 2 - Gender and Life Writing

Group 3 - Trauma and Life-Writing

Group 4 - Educated by Tara Westover review – escape from a Mormon fundamentalist family

Group 5 - Escape from Doomsday: Tara Westover's journey from a survivalist cult to Cambridge

Search Tips for Finding Scholarly Sources for this Assignment

Link to slides with search term suggestions
Use the asterisk * to search for multiple endings of a word e.g. masculin* will find masculine, masculinity, masculinities, etc.
Use quotation marks to search for a particular phrase or title e.g. "life writing"
If you are not finding what you need, brainstorm possible synonyms, related terms, or alternative spellings for your search words. You can incorporate these additional words into your search with OR between them. The advanced search option in LibrarySearch and other search terms makes this easier. You also can typically specify in the advance search screen where you would like the search word to appear (e.g. title)

Finding Scholarly Encyclopedia Entries

Scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries and handbooks (also known as reference works) provide short definitions or overviews to terms and topics. They are particularly helpful at the beginning of your research, as they may give you additional search terms to help you uncover more sources.

Credo Academic Core
An online reference library comprised of reference books including encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, etc.
Searching Tips

Credo Permalink Help
Oxford Reference Library
Cross-searchable dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press.
Includes subscription titles via Oxford Reference Online Premium subscription collection as well as access to individual reference titles purchased perpetually.

Specific encyclopedia titles that might contain relevant entries:

SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies (2020)
SAGE Encyclopedia of Higher Education (2020)

Finding Scholarly/Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Characteristics of a Peer Reviewed Scholarly Article

Author or authors are experts in their field. It will list the institution/research institute that they are affiliated with e.g. Mount Royal University
Article appears in a publication that employs peer review to ensure the quality of the articles it publishes. This is usually indicated on the journal homepage or you can refer to Ulrich's Directory where journals with peer review are indicated with a striped referee shirt next to the title
The title will be very specific, clearly identifying the research question the article is exploring
The intended audience is other experts in the field, so the language used may include lots of jargon or advanced terminology. Give yourself extra time to read the article for this reason.
The article itself will be long (typically more than 3 pages)
Outside sources of information are clearly cited throughout (you should expect to see a lot of footnotes/endnotes/entries on a bibliography)

Examples of Peer Reviewed Scholarly Articles

LibrarySearch refers to the search box on the Library homepage

Tips for Using LibrarySearch to Find Religious Studies Scholarly Articles

Once you have run your search, use the limits on the left hand side to limit to Peer Reviewed and Resource Type - Articles.
- Note: The peer reviewed limit doesn't work perfectly - you have to look at the full text of the article to confirm it is a scholarly research article. Refer to the characteristics listed in an earlier tab.
Select "Expand your results beyond MRU Library" to make sure you are seeing the broadest range of research on your topic. If we don't have a copy of the article you are interested in, you can request it for free using our interlibrary loan service.

Image of filters in LibrarySearch. Peer reviewed and resource type - articles limits have been selected. Setting has been changed to show results beyond MRU Library

Google Scholar is another tool that can be used to find peer reviewed scholarly articles. Please note that there isn't a review process as to what gets added to Google Scholar, so make sure you critically evaluate the sources you find.

If you are using Google Scholar at home, it is important to change the settings to see links to the full text of articles through MRU Library

In Settings, select Library Links. Search for MRU Library. Check the box "Full-text@MRU Library" and click save.

You will now see links for Full-Text@MRU Library next to your search results

Screenshot of Google Scholar showing the link to full text next to the article

Finding Scholarly Books and Book Chapters

How Do I Know if a Book is Scholarly?
Using LibrarySearch to Find Scholarly Books

Characteristics of a Scholarly Book

The author or authors are experts in their field. Their institutional affiliation might be noted in the book's introduction or an "about the authors" section. If you don't see this information, you can typically confirm their background by searching for their name. Most university researchers will be featured on university's website.
Scholarly books do typically go through a review process that involves obtaining feedback from an expert or multiple experts in the field
The book is published by an academic press (e.g. Oxford University Press, University of Toronto Press) or a publisher that specializes in academic books (e.g. Routledge)
The intended audience is other experts in the field, so the language used may include lots of jargon or advanced terminology.
Sources are clearly cited throughout the book (you should expect to see a lot of footnotes/endnotes/entries on a bibliography).

Examples of Scholarly Books or Chapters in Edited Scholarly Books

Doomsday Preppers: The Man-pocalypse (chapter in Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood)
An Academic Imposter From the Working Class: Emotional Labor and First-Generation College Students (chapter in Narratives of Marginalized Identities in Higher Education)

Tips for Finding Books using LibrarySearch

There isn't a limit for scholarly books (the peer reviewed limit only works with journal articles), so you will need to take a look at the book itself to make sure it is a scholarly discussion of the topic
You can limit to books and book chapters under Resource Type
Books are tagged with subject labels, so if you find one useful book, you can use the subject to link to similar books