Child Development

You may be wondering what we mean when we refer to scholarly versus popular.

• Scholarly: In-depth, research-based articles, books, and book chapters, written by scholars and experts and intended for other researchers, experts, and students.
• Popular: Articles, books, and book chapters written by journalists or professional writers for a general audience in common language (e.g., newspapers and magazines).

Learn more: What is Scholarly?

While we're at it, how about a few more key terms...

• Peer-Reviewed: A process through which some scholarly articles and book chapters are critically evaluated by experts with in-depth knowledge of the research area before publication in order to ensure the information is valid, credible, well-written, and of high quality. 
• Literature: Scholarly articles, books, and book chapters published on a particular subject.
• Primary Resource:  A scholarly or popular article that provides evidence of an occurrence and involves the participation of the researcher
• Secondary Resource: A scholarly or popular article that is more removed by time or place, usually a synthesis or summary of research that has already been published.

Credo contains many subject-specific encyclopedias, including the following:

• For information on why to cite your sources and how to avoid plagiarism, see the Get Started with Library Research: Cite Sources guide. 

• For information on APA Style, see the APA Citation Guide
• Zotero
  "Free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources." Download instructions and help available on the site.

To get the full text of an article, consider the following options:

- If you are in Encompass Search or a library database, look for "Check for Full Text buttons," "Access Online," or "Check eResources" buttons. These buttons will take you the full text of the article or tell you that the full text cannot be found. If the full text is not available from Trexler Library, look for buttons to request the item from another library via interlibrary loan. Or go directly to the interlibrary loan request forms.

- If you have citation information for the article (i.e., journal title, article title, publication year, etc.), type the information about your article in Encompass Search on the library website. If the library subscribes to the full text, you will be directed to the article (see first bullet above). If not, you can request a copy of the article via interlibrary loan.

- If Trexler Library does not have access to the full text of the article, search Google Scholar by article title to see if the author has made a copy freely available online. If not, you can request a copy of the article via interlibrary loan.