Finding Information – National Information Literacy Awareness Month
Information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, and use information ethically and for a specific purpose. Today, we’ll review a few types of information and the ways that Evans Library helps you find it.
Books, eBooks, and multimedia
The Evans Library catalog indexes these and more. You’ll find maps, government documents, and journal titles here, too, but remember that you will not find journal articles or book chapters in the catalog.
Journals and journal articles
Evans Library provides three good ways to begin your search of peer-reviewed literature using databases:
- If you know the journal title, use A to Z Journals, which shows the full text journals available in the library and includes links to the databases that you can use to search within them. For example, a search for the journal Aviation Week and Space Technology shows that it’s available in an online database as well as in print (Evans Library Hardcopy Periodicals).
- If you don’t have a particular journal in mind but are already familiar with your topic, use A to Z Databases to choose a pertinent database. A to Z Databases lets you search by title or browse the complete list, and gives a description of each database.
- If you are unfamiliar with your topic or would like to search multiple databases at once, use Summon, which indexes almost all of the library’s holdings – all of the items in our physical collection as well as items in most of our databases (those that require a personal login, such as SciFinder, and some of our reference databases are not indexed in Summon). Summon is a great place to read a variety of literature in a new field or to become familiar with terminology in a new research area.
Websites
Evans Library’s librarians collect, evaluate, and describe websites that are authoritative and valuable for your research. Find Sites by Discipline from the library website, then choose your field.
These are just some of the ways that Evans Library helps you to find information. Stay tuned for more celebration of National Information Literacy Awareness Month right here!
As always, if you need help, Ask a Librarian!
Magnifying glass image by Julo (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
