GNED 1303 - M. Haile - General Education - MRU Library Website at Mount Royal University

Activity: Is this source credible?

As a group, take a look at your assigned source and discuss the following questions for the next 5 minutes.

What type of source is this? (e.g. scholarly peer reviewed journal article, scholarly book, magazine article, newspaper article, intergovernmental or government website)
Is this source trustworthy enough to use for an assignment in this course? Why or why not?

Source #1 - Rescue Plan for Nature: How to Fix the Biodiversity Crisis

Source #2 - The Biodiversity Crisis in Numbers - A Visual Guide

Source #3 - Communicating the Biodiversity Crisis: From “Warnings” to Positive Engagement

Source #4 - Ecological Justice and the Extinction Crisis: Giving Living Beings their Due

Source #5 - Biodiversity - Our Strongest Natural Defense Against Climate Change

How do I know if something is credible?

Celia Brinkerhoff, Doing Research, CC-BY-4.0

Summary of Tips for Searching for Scholarly Articles and Books

LibrarySearch (search box on Library's home page)

Good for searching for scholarly articles and books across disciplines
Use the limits provided (peer reviewed and resource type: article) to limit your results
Quotation marks "" around two or more words will search it as a phrase "global citizen"
Asterisk * searches for different endings on a word develop* will find development, developing
Advanced search allows you to specify where a word is located e.g. the title of the resource

Google Scholar

Good for searching for scholarly articles across disciplines
Look out for non-scholarly content
If you are looking for books, use LibrarySearch instead
intitle: in front of a word looks for it in the title of the article e.g. intitle:global citizenship
Be sure to use date limits - many of the first articles listed are dated

Subject Specific Databases

Sometimes it can be helpful to use a databases created for a specific discipline. You can find a list of these databases on the Library's subject guides. Here are some databases that might be helpful

Leadership? Try the business database ABI Inform.
Global environmental issues? Try Environment Complete

Using Google Scholar at Home

If you are using Google Scholar at home, you will have to adjust the settings to see which articles are available full text through MRU library.

Click on the Stacked Menu in the Top Left Corner and Choose Settings

Select Library Links. In the search box, search for Mount Royal. Be sure to hit save!

Articles that we paid for access to will be flagged in your search results

Searching for Reports from NGOs and Intergovernmental Organizations

Policy Commons
Policy Commons is a one-stop community platform for objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, IGOs and NGOs.

You can also do a targeted Google search of a particular website - for example:

strategy global health site:who.int

Use the Google Tools to limit to a particular date range e.g. past year

A Guide to Countries of the World (4th ed., 2016)
Quick reference resource on the history, politics and society of 240 countries
Political Handbook of the World (2021)

Business Source Complete (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
This database contains scholarly articles as well as country reports. To find a country report, search for the country, and then limit to Source Types - Country Reports
Access to this resource is funded by Alberta Advanced Education through the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library.