LITERATURE GUIDE
- How to find chemical information: a guide for practicing chemists, educators, and students (Floor 3 - QD8.5 .M34 1998)
DATABASES
Identify keywords and terms and develop a search strategy:
- Developing a search strategy
- Tips for keyword and subject searching
- Use Boolean searching and truncation in a database search to focus results
Information Sources: Chemistry + Biochemistry
Google Scholar -- Searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed articles, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and reports across many disciplines and sources. On your first visit, set Google Scholar preferences: select "Settings," click “Library Links” on left menu, type "CSUN" in the box “Show library access links…” and click the button with the magnifying glass icon to search (or hit Enter); check the box next to "CSU, Northridge - SFX Find It at CSUN;" and click the Save button.
Types of Resources
Primary Sources
Primary sources are original materials on which other research is based. It includes documents such as poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys, fieldwork, and some newspaper articles. It also includes research results generated by experiments, which are published as journal articles in some fields of study.
They are also sets of data, such as census statistics, which have been tabulated, but not interpreted.
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources describe or analyze the primary sources.
Examples of secondary sources include: dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and books and articles that interpret or review research works.
Tertiary Sources
Examples of tertiary sources includes indexes and abstracts which serve to locate secondary and primary sources. An index will provide a citation which fully identifies the work: author, title of article, title of journal or book, publisher and date of publication, For a journal it will include the volume, issue and pagination. An abstract is a summary of the work being cited. Many indexes and abstract are available now online.
| Subject Area | Primary Source | Secondary Source | Tertiary Source |
| Art | Original artwork | Article critiquing the piece of art | Art Index |
| History | Slave diary | Book about the Underground Railroad | American: History and Life |
| Literature | Poem | Book on a particular genre of poetry | MLA |
| Computer Science | Original research published as a journal article | Introductory textbook on programming | INSPEC |
| Sociology | Indian Education Act of 1972 | Journal article on Native American education | ERIC |