- Hi, I'm Vanessage Slagle. And this is From the Memoirs of a Modern Librarian. This episode is on scholarly research. During your college experience, you're sure to have to write a research paper on more than one occasion. In order to be successful when writing a research paper, you must engage in scholarly research. So what is scholarly research? 

It is simply the act of locating authoritative sources of information written by experts in their field. These sources can be books or journal articles, print, or electronic. In this case, using Google and Wikipedia just won't cut it. So how can you tell when information is scholarly and authoritative, not Googley and Wikitative? 

Many times, you can determine if a work is scholarly by looking at the credentials and affiliations of the author or authors, usually listed somewhere on the resource. Sometimes, a short biography of the author is listed somewhere in the book or article. This is one way you can tell if the author is knowledgeable about the subject. 

Next, look at the reference or bibliography page of the work. This allows you to verify the accuracy of the information in the text by looking at who the author has cited. Most importantly, you can determine if a work is authoritative if it has undergone peer review. Peer review is a process by which an author's research undergoes a period of evaluation by his or her peers in their profession. These experts determine whether or not the information the authors work is accurate and reliable. 

Today, many research databases allow you to select only peer reviewed material when searching for scholarly articles. So why aren't Google and Wikipedia ideal for doing scholarly research? First of all, anyone can put information on the web. Google and other popular search engines cannot guarantee for you if something is a reliable source of information. 

Also, the amount of information that exists online is overwhelming. And there is no academic standard by which the information is organized. Not only is it a lot more difficult to determine the reliability of information that is easily found online, but a lot of great research material is not accessible for free on the web. 

Now, I'm not saying that Google and Wikipedia don't have their place. They can be useful as jumping-off points for finding basic information about your topic. Once you're headed in the right direction, use scholarly sources of information for your citations. This is where libraries and their resources come into play. Libraries subscribe to and pay quite a lot of money each year for scholarly journals, databases, and other material. These resources can be easily found from your library's website. 

While many scholarly journals are published in print, many of these resources and more are available in electronic format online. These are found using online research databases. One example of a research database is EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier. This database is a great tool that contains citations for newspapers, books, magazines, and journal articles. The content of this database covers a wide variety of subjects and disciplines, from art to science, and much more. You can limit your search results by selecting full text, peer review, and even the title of a publication. 

When conducting scholarly research, keep in mind that there are knowledgeable reference librarians who are equipped and eager to help you. They can be contacted via phone, email, online chat, or face to face at your library. Thank you for watching this installment of From the Memoirs of a Modern Librarian. Be sure to check out our next video on citing your resources.