LibGuides: Psychology: Get Started

Getting Started

Background sources like encyclopedias can provide context for your topic or even help you choose one. They are great places to start because:

They explain topics in simpler language than scholarly articles.
They are much shorter than scholarly articles or books.
They highlight important issues, figures, dates, and/or events that you may want to focus on in your project.
They give you suggested sources for further research in the form of bibliographies or works cited.

Credo Reference
Credo is an easy-to-use tool for research projects. Search in hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 200,000+ images and audio files, and nearly 100 videos.
Encyclopedia Britannica Academic Edition
Contains full text of encyclopedia articles, including illustrations such as photographs, drawings, maps, and flags. Also includes a dictionary, selected video clips, and links to over 200,000 related websites reviewed by Britannica editors.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context
Opposing Viewpoints in Context is a one-stop source for information on today's hottest social issues. It features viewpoint articles, topic overviews, full-text magazine, academic journal, and newspaper articles, primary source documents, statistics, images and podcasts, and links to Websites. New to the database are Lexile reading levels for periodicals and an integrated national and state curriculum standards search with content correlated to the standards.

Wikipedia
Use Wikipedia to develop an understanding of a topic and to find quality sources. However, at the college level most instructors do not want you to cite Wikipedia in your assignment because it is not a scholarly source.

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