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Library Resources |
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
- West's encyclopedia of American Law 2nd ed. 2005
- Location: Gale Virtual Reference Collection
- Gale encyclopedia of every day law
- Location: Gale Virtual Reference Collection
- Encyclopedia of the American Constitution
- Location: Gale Virtual Reference Collection
- Encyclopedia of Law and Higher Education
- Location: Gale Virtual Reference Collection
- Encyclopedia of Law and Society (2007)
- Location: Sage Reference Collection
- Encyclopedia of gun control and gun rights
- Location: Reference Room KF3941.A68|bU88 2000
- Homosexuality and the law: a dictionary
- Location: Reference Room KF4754.5.A68 S74 2001 and Netlibrary
- Religion and American law : an encyclopedia 2000
- Location: Reference Room KF4783.A68 R45 2000
- Key word search Law, modify search; limit by location: electronic reference
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Digital U.S. Government Documents for History and - Government Resources for Social Issues
What are Reference Books?
Reference books include encyclopedias, almanacs, handbooks, guides and style manuals. They can help you find quick factual information and are a good place to get background information.
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: books, handbooks, textbooks, and articles that interpret or review research works. Encyclopedias maybe secondary as well as tertiary.
Tertiary Sources
Examples of tertiary sources includes dictionaries, encyclopedias, 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.