The Tabs above outline the process used to go from basic resource discovery through subject-specific in-depth tools, as well as techniques to capture, organize, and share your information.
The processes may differ for various types of materials. For book materials, there are different pathways for electronic books and paper books.
For journal materials, we highlight approaches to discover and obtain core journals within our Academic Search Complete aggregator package - how to expand your domain to discover resources in our other more-in-depth subject journal aggregator databases - and how to request in-dept materials we do not own through InterLibrary Loan (ILL) .
We describe Personal Knowledge Management, using a few example tools that are powerful generic software products (Zotero and diigo), but there are many community-specific tools that address special population features.
Each discipline may emphasize different stages of the Information Life Cycle, so techniques may vary within disciplines based upon changing roles, responsibilities, and associated information tools as one develops academic expertise.
Please be sure to consult with your subject librarian for more complete and comprehensive tools and techniques for your specific disciplines.
We have created a brief process overview of the steps described in greater detail on these pages.
The materials presented in the various tabs on this guide provide a significant amount of detail in terms of best resources, appropriate search tools, critical thinking approaches, and personal knowledge management skills to organize your information.
The following tutorials provide a brief overview of the key points, highlighting a few tools and best approaches.
Basic Library Introduction: This video demonstrates the main elements on our web site, the subject pages, key databases, and help materials and contacts.
We recommend that you start your research on our customized Subject pages.
Library Skills and Help: This video describes some of the best methods of performing and refining searches for information, and ways to think critically about the results that are returned by our search engines.
See a few images of the comparative domains of our search tools.
There is also a video presentation about the limits of Google and the alternative search options.
There are many theoretical and philosophical issues surrounding the creation and sharing of information.
Each discipline handles information and knowledge in unique ways, with customized communication and peer review networks. These ever-changing paradigms are often known as subject frameworks ... and have their own information lifecycles. An expert in a field must develop information fluency by learning the formal and informal network characteristics in order to navigate within their own scholarly community.
Our discussion of various aspects of this complex topic is found on our Scholarly Communication page.