Research Guides: Education: 2: Find Sources

Find Sources

Find Journal articles report the results of research by experts. Sometimes they're also called "peer-reviewed articles," "scholarly articles," or "academic articles." They are often used in academic research.

You should use journal articles because they:

Contain evidence based on research
Are written by experts
Focus on a narrow topic
Provide detailed information
Are probably more accurate because of the peer-review process
Lend credibility to your paper

Find journal articles in these databases:

Education Source This link opens in a new window
Education Source is designed to meet the needs of education students, professionals and policy makers. The collection provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,850 academic periodicals and includes full text for more than 1,800 journals, 550 books and monographs, education-related conference papers, citations for over 4 million articles including book reviews and over 100,000 controlled and cross-referenced names of educational tests. Coverage in Education Source spans all levels of education from early childhood to higher education and also includes educational specialties such as multilingual education, health education and testing.
Education Database This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from leading journals in education and related fields.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Index of journal and book literature from the American Psychological Association.

Books on a shelf Some books include research by experts, and you may want to use them in your research project.

You should use books because they:

Give a broad overview of one or more topics
Explain a complex topic (books are easier to understand than journal articles)
Offer in-depth analysis of a topic
Summarize previous research on a topic

Find books in these databases:

UNC Libraries Catalog
Searches books, eBooks, music, videos, and other items at the Michener and Skinner Libraries.
Prospector
Searches books at other libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. Request books from these libraries and have them delivered to the Michener or Skinner Libraries.

Graph on a paper Statistics can come from different sources, including the federal and state governments and non-profit organizations.

You should use statistics because they help:

Explain how widespread the problem is
Explain how severe the problem is
Convince your readers that the problem needs to be solved

Find statistics in these databases:

Colorado Education Statistics
Provides district level and state level statistics regarding pupil membership, graduation, dropouts, suspension/expulsion, attendance, and teacher salary.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista is one of the first statistic portals in the world to integrate data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform. Categorized into 21 market sectors, Statista provides direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets. Data can be downloaded and exported for academic use.

Photographer takes self-portrait Images are the visual depictions of scholarly and creative works. Video represents a wide variety of streaming media sources including documentary films, concerts and recitals, lectures, demonstrations, experiments, animations, interviews, news stories, and feature films.

You should use images because they:

Supplement written explanations
Illustrate artistic or scientific themes or techniques
Explain concepts visually and/or auditorily
Convey conditions
Provide visual accounts of events, demonstrations, or performances

Find images and video in these databases:

Education in Video This link opens in a new window
Collection of streaming video developed specifically for training and developing teachers.
Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online is the most comprehensive video subscription available to libraries. It delivers video titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. Curated for the educational experience, the massive depth of content and breadth of content-types (such as documentaries, films, demonstrations, etc.) makes this database a useful resource for faculty and students alike.

Search Effectively

Yellow, blue, and purple keys Unlike Google, library databases can't understand complete sentences. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important concepts, also called keywords, and use those keywords to search library databases.

Example topic: How does social media impact happiness among teenagers?

Keywords: social media, happiness, teenagers

Brainstorm synonyms:

Sometimes experts use different terms than we use in everyday conversation. It's important to think of synonyms and related terms for your keywords so that you can use different combinations of words to get the best results when searching.

Keyword: teenagers

Synonyms: adolescents, youth

Library databases often have built-in search tools. Try them out!

Peer-Reviewed: Limit your search to journal articles.
Discipline: Limit your search to a particular discipline (such as psychology or education).
Publication Date: Limit your search to sources published during certain years.
Subject Terms: These are like library hashtags. Limit your search to sources about that subject.

Quotation marks Experts often cite each other's work, and that can help you find more sources on your topic!

To find older relevant sources:

Find the list of sources at the end of a relevant source you've found. This may be called "bibliography," "works cited," or "references."
Look for titles in the list that relate to your topic.
Copy and paste relevant titles into a library database.

To find newer relevant sources:

When you find a relevant source in a database, look for a link called "Cited by."
Click this link to see more recent sources that may be related to your topic.