Come talk to your research librarian (profile on homepage) or a student Library Research Consultant at the Reference Desk to walk through any questions you have! You have plenty of options to get help in person or online:
Make sure you cite your sources in all your research projects and papers, using the citation style your professor has assigned. For the field of Spanish, you may be required to format your citations in MLA style.
Citation can get pretty complicated, but we have a few resources you can use for help:
You can ask a librarian or visit the Rhetoric Center to walk through citations with personal help!
Library resources and the research process sometimes involves some unfamiliar terminology. Here are a few common terms and some brief definitions to refresh your understanding:
Reference sources - compile lots of information to give a general overview of a topic (examples: encyclopedias, dictionaries, statistics, etc.)
Encyclopedias - have many short articles to explain all the important terms, people, events, places, techniques, and issues of a specific subject
Call number - unique letter/number code found on the spine of every item and in the its catalog record, to help locate everything on the shelf
Subject heading - library version of tags, labeling a book/article by its subjects, giving you another way to search in the catalog and databases
Peer-reviewed - specifically judged and reviewed by experts in the field to verify that the information is legitimate
Research databases - search online collections academic journals for articles focused on specific subjects (example: CINAHL)
Research guides - what you're using now! lists recommended resources and tips for doing research in a particular subject or class
Full text - complete article, not just a summary or citation, to view online or download (FullText@Hekman tells you if we have access)
Citation - shorthand to record important information about where information is found, formatted according to different citation styles
References - list of citations, all the sources used in a study or presentation, found at the end (sometimes called "works cited" or "bibliography")
Catalog - database showing everything in the library's collection (print books, DVDs, journals, links to other databases and ebooks, etc.)
Research librarian - (also called "liaison librarian") librarian assigned to a particular department or subject to help students do research