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Guide to General Academic Research
Table of Contents
Introduction
This is a general guide to academic research. You may want to use this guide
if:
- you are starting your research and have not yet narrowed your topic
- you are not sure what resources are available
- your topic is not listed as one of our subject-specific guides
No matter what topic you are researching a good place to start your research is to look for information in periodical literature. It is important to include articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers in your research for several reasons:
- they tend to be more current than books
- they document current thought on an issue
- they demonstrate how information changes over time
- they enable comparisons to be made over time
- they cover new research areas or new studies or findings
- Academic Search Premier
Location: Library Databases
Description: Full text articles from more than 1,250 journals since 1990 covering a variety of disciplines in arts, humanities, science, social sciences, business, and technology.
- LexisNexis Academic
Location: Library Databases
Description: Full text newspapers and journals and magazines in a variety of subject areas as well as business research, legal research, and other reference sources.
- Expanded Academic ASAP
Location: Library Databases
Description: Full text articles from over 1,000 magazines and journals in a variety of disciplines in social sciences, humanities, and science and technology.
- MasterFILE Premier
Location: Library Databases
Description: Full text articles from more than 1,820 journals in arts and humanities, social sciences, science, technology, and business.
- Wilson Select Plus
Location: Library Databases
Description: More than 1,300 full text journals and magazines in science, social sciences, humanities and literature, and business.
Books are critical to academic research. Authors of academic books are often experts in their fields and their work is usually reviewed and edited before publishing, which ensures some degree of authority and accuracy. Consider using books in your research to get background information on a topic, find specific, in-depth knowledge, or to discover a variety of perspectives on your topic.Use the University System of Maryland (USM) library catalog to find books and other materials on your topic.
- USM Library Catalog
Location: http://catalog.umd.edu/search=basic
Description: Online catalog for the University System of Maryland. Search the catalog to find books and other materials on your topic.
- Libdex
Location: http://www.libdex.com
Description: Worldwide directory of library homepages, web-based library catalogs, Friends of the Library pages, and library e-commerce affiliate links.
- Libweb
Location: http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/
Description: Geographical list of library Web sites.
In addition to print resources, you may also want to use electronic
books to find information for your research. E-books are electronic
versions of print publications. The entire book can be viewed in full
text, including table of contents, index, and appendices.
UMUC Information and Library Services subscribes to a growing collection of
e-books through the database called NetLibrary. For more information on NetLibrary
see E-Books.
- NetLibrary
Location: Library Databases
Description: Collection of full text books online. Search by author, title, publisher, keyword, or words anywhere in full text.
The World Wide Web can be a good place to find information on research topics for your academic work. Some examples of information available on the Web that can be used to support academic work are:
- company Web sites
- government regulatory sites
- government statistical sites
- public and private research sites
- electronic journals
- Google
Location: http://www.google.com/
Description: A major search tool which uses a proprietary system for ranking the results of a search where the more sites that link to a given page, the higher that page appears in the rankings.
- Altavista
Location: http://www.altavista.com/
Description: A major search engine with advanced search features to help limit and focus your search.
- All The Web
Location: http://www.alltheweb.com/
Description: One of the larger search engines in terms of the number of pages it searches. In addition to searching standard Web documents, you can also search for images, videos, MP3s, and FTP files.
- Northern Light
Location: http://www.northernlight.com/
Description: Search results are grouped in categories of preselected, evaluated resources. Includes both free documents and subscription information.
- SCIRUS
Location: http://www.scirus.com/
Description: Search engine for scientific information.
- Infomine
Location: http://infomine.ucr.edu/
Description: Searchable database of Internet resources of relevance to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level.
- Scout Report Archives
Location: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/archives/
Description: Searchable database of critical annotations of selected Internet sites from more than seven years of Scout Reports. The Scout Report is a weekly publication listing new online resources of interest to researchers, educators, and anyone else with an interest in high-quality online material.
- Academic Info
Location: http://www.academicinfo.net/index.html
Description: Gateway to Internet resources targeted to the college and university level.
For assistance in using any of these resources, contact Information and Library Services by phone at 301-985-7209 or 800-888-UMUC (8682) x7209, or by e-mail at library@umuc.edu.