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Reference Works

General Information

Generally attempt to summarize topics and/or assist in finding secondary literature. The purpose of these sources is to answer short questions, provide background information, and help you find other sources. Reference works come in a wild assortment of types on all subjects.

Strengths:

• Good starting points for research, particularly in unfamiliar topic areas (disciplinary handbooks, subject encyclopedias)
• Good sources for quick facts, contact information, or statistics (almanacs, directories)
• Good for discovering new vocabularies (dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias)
• Provide lists of information sources on a topic (indexes, bibliographies)

Considerations:

• Usually tools for finding more in-depth information sources, rather than being sources themselves
• Normally are found in the library's reference section and cannot be checked out (Some are linked to a library's web page and can be accessed from anywhere)
• To start serious research, you should know enough about your topic to talk about it for 1 minute without repeating yourself
• Target audience: General public

Example: Immigration Reform

Here are example citations to reference titles on this topic:

• Gibney, Matthew J. and Randell Hansen, eds. Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to
       the Present. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CL10, 2005.
  
  
• Ember, Melvin, Carol R. Ember, and Ian Sroggard, eds. Encyclopedia of Diasporas:
       Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. New York: Kluwer Academic,
       2004.

Tools for Finding these Sources

• UCAT (limit search to Reference)
• Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL)
• Reference Resources, General
• NetLibrary Reference Center