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How to Use This Tutorial

Welcome to The Library's Research Skills for Land and Food Systems Tutorial! This tutorial is meant to serve as a resource to help you with all the steps of the research process. There are multiple ways you can use this tutorial, depending on your needs. You can read through the tutorial in order in order to gain an overall understanding of the research process. If you need to explore or refresh yourself on a particular concept, you can either click directly into a page in the Table of Contents below, or click on a particular question in the FAQ.

Table of Contents

1. Scholarly Communication
   1. The Cycle of Scholarly Communication
   2. Introduction to Scholarly Communication
   3. Primary Literature
   4. Secondary Literature
   5. Tertiary Literature
   6. Popular Writing
   7. Popular Science Writing
   8. Scholarly Writing
   9. Evaluating Sources
2. Fundamentals of the Research Process
   1. Citing Your Sources
      1. Introduction to Citing the Literature
      2. What is Plagiarism?
      3. Strategy One: Common Knowledge
      4. Strategy Two: Taking Notes
      5. Strategy Three: Paraphrasing and Summarizing
      6. What is Citing?
      7. How to Cite Your Sources
   2. Search Fundamentals
      1. Introduction to Search Fundamentals
      2. Keywords = Search Terms
      3. Make your own Keywords
      4. Combining Concepts in Boolean Searches
      5. Truncation
      6. Phrase Searching
      7. Self-Test on Truncation
3. Finding Books and Articles
   1. Finding Books
      1. Introduction to Finding Books
      2. Using Keywords in Summon
      3. Limiting Searches to Books/eBooks
      4. Reference Books
      5. Wikipedia
      6. Finding a Book from a Citation
      7. Print Books
   2. Finding Articles
      1. Introduction to using Summon to Find Articles
      2. Using Summon to Find Articles
      3. Finding articles in Summon from a citation
      4. What to do if UBC doesn't have the Article You're Looking For

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

• How do I distinguish between popular and scholarly writing?
• What is a primary source?
• What is a secondary source?
• What is plagiarism and what happens if I plagiarize?
• How do I properly cite sources in my paper?
• How do I create good keywords for a search?
• What is Boolean Searching and how does it work? (AND/OR in searches)
• What is Truncation in searching?
• What is Summon?
• How do I find books in Summon?
• How do I find and use reference books?
• Should I use Wikipedia in my research?
• How do I locate and borrow a physical book in the library?
• How do I find articles in Summon?