Research Tips and Tutorials

Research Tips and Tutorials~

Valerie Mattson

All of these links are really helpful for researching and studying!  In “Library 101”, students can go onto Saint Cloud State’s library website and find journal articles, cite their sources, and finding books by following the directions on how to navigate through this webpage.  Under “Research Tips and Tutorials”, students can assist in choosing a topic and get more information.  The “Information Cycle” helps to show students what resources they should use depending on what they want to be included in the content of this resource and also includes what articles to utilize to include all of the needed information.  For graduate students, there are links to provide research assistance.  There are also primary sources available that include historical newspapers and other online sources.  There are also primary sources available for students working on History Day projects.

            There is also help with finding resources.  There are links to help locate scholarly articles.  The website can help students to see the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazine articles and also the difference between scholarly and popular materials guide.  For students with iPhones, iPads, and Androids, they are able to download apps for academic research.  These apps are located in the link, “Apps and Mobile Connections for Academic Research at SCSU”.  Internet search tools are also available to show how to use different search engines and to help evaluate the credibility of websites. 

             Help with evaluating information includes assessing the credibility of online sources, journal articles, books, webpages, and websites. 

            With the information students find, there are also links to help show how to cite, such as APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian.  Students are also able to see how to make an account with RefWorks Basics that helps to manage citations and create bibliographies.

            The link, “Research Tips and Tutorials” is helpful with learning how to efficiently utilize the library, choose and research a topic, planning research, identify scholarly articles, citing sources, and determining the credibility of a source.