Library:UBC Library Resources/Researching

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Researching

Finding sources for your research

• Research Guides
  • UBC Library licenses or purchases thousands of books, e-books and journals, as well as hundreds of databases. To make it easier to find just what you need we have created research guides covering every discipline taught at UBC. Each research guide contains links to the best databases, journals and print materials for the relevant subject area.
• Journal databases
  • If you know you only want to look at journal articles by specific subject you can go directly to our Journal databases by Subject list. This list allows you to choose the most appropriate databases to try for your topic.
• Summon
  • If your topic is multidisciplinary and/or if you would like to search for a variety of formats, use Summon - the Library's new search engine. It searches for print and electronic books, journal articles, multimedia formats, datasets, maps, theses & dissertations (and more) all at once.
  • If your Summon results list is too long, you can simplify matters by searching for one general format type at a time. For books, e-books, CDs, maps and musical scores search in the Library Catalogue. You can find journal articles by searching in an appropriate database, either via our Research Guides or our list of Journal databases by Subject.
• Evaluating Internet Sources
  • The World Wide Web dishes up a seemingly endless array of free content - much of it created by average citizens. Unlike traditional academic books and journals, however, no one edits or peer-reviews Web resources. This means that you will have to assess whether or not the sources you find are suitable: i.e, scholarly, accurate, current, unbiased, not plagiarized etc., before using them for your assignments. The Library guide to Evaluating Internet Sources provides information and tips to make this process easier.
• Evaluating Print Sources
  • Consult the Library guide to Evaluating Print Sources to ensure that your print sources are also suitable for your research.

Citing / Academic Integrity

• How to Cite
  • Now that you've done your research how do you cite your sources properly? Each major citation style has its own handbook laying out its rules. You can consult one of these guides or check out the Library's guide: How to Cite.
  • Print manuals are available at most Library branches - see below for further details.
    • APA: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
    • Chicago/Turabian:Chicago Manual of Style
    • MLA: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

• Academic Integrity Resource Centre
  • "Academic integrity is honest and responsible scholarship. As a university student, you are expected to submit original work and give credit to other peoples' ideas...." Read more about academic integrity and plagiarism here:http://help.library.ubc.ca/researching/academic-integrity/. The guide includes an online tutorial.

• RefWorks
  • UBC Library licenses RefWorks, "a web-based citation management program that enables you to:
    • download, gather, and store references from databases and library catalogues automatically
    • format citations and bibliographies in seconds
    • connect to your RefWorks account anywhere there's web access
    • share your citations with other RefWorks users"

For more information about RefWorks check out our guide here: http://guides.library.ubc.ca/refworks